Dispersion induced by unsteady diffusion-driven flow in a parallel-plate channel

Diffusion-driven flow is a boundary layer flow that results from the combined influence of gravity and diffusion, which exists in density-stratified fluids whenever a gravitational field is not parallel to the solid boundary. In this paper, we investigate the unsteady diffusion-driven flows that emerge in a parallel-plate channel domain with a linear density stratification. We first compute the time-dependent diffusion-driven flows and perturbed density field using eigenfunction expansions under the Boussinesq approximation. In channel domain, the unsteady flow converges to a steady-state solution either monotonically or nonmonotonically (highly oscillatory), depending on the relation between the Schmidt number and the nondimensionalized stratified scalar diffusivity, while the flow in the half-space inclined plane problem exhibits oscillatory convergence for all parameters. To validate the Boussinesq approximation, we propose the quasi-Boussinesq approximation, which includes transverse density variation in the inertial term. Numerical solutions show that the relative difference between the Boussinesq and quasi-Boussinesq approximations is uniformly small. We also study the mixing of a passive tracer induced by the advection of the unsteady diffusion-driven flow and present the series representation of the time-dependent effective diffusion coefficient. For small Schmidt numbers, the effective diffusion coefficient induced by the unsteady flow solution can oscillate with an amplitude larger than the effective diffusion coefficient induced by the long-time-limiting steady-state flow. Interestingly, the unsteady flow solution can reduce the time-dependent effective diffusion coefficient temporally in some parameter regimes, below even that produced by pure molecular diffusion in the absence of a flow. However, at long times, the effective diffusion is significantly enhanced for large Peclet numbers.