Variable gravity effects on penetrative porous convection

The effect of variable gravity on the onset of penetrative convection in a horizontal fluid-saturated porous layer is studied, performing the linear instability analysis and the nonlinear stability analysis (via the weighted energy method) of the thermal conduction solution. The linear and nonlinear critical Rayleigh numbers for the onset of penetrative porous convection are determined and their behaviour with respect to the fundamental physical parameters of the model is studied. In particular, we found that there exists a region of subcritical instabilities and that the increase of the upper bounding plane temperature and the decrease of gravity have a stabilizing effect on the onset of convection.