Linear stability analysis of particle-laden Couette-Poiseuille flows: effect of porous walls

Abstract

The current study presents a three-dimensional linear stability analysis of particle-laden Couette-Poiseuille flow suspended in a Newtonian fluid between two parallel plates, with the lower plate coated by a porous medium. The influence of suspended particles is examined using a two-domain formulation in which particles are confined to the fluid layer and do not penetrate the porous substrate. The particle-laden suspension is modeled using the dusty-gas framework, while the flow within the porous layer is described by the volume-averaged Navier-Stokes (VANS) equations. In particle-laden flows over impermeable walls, particle inertia may either stabilize or destabilize the flow depending on the governing parameters. In contrast, the presence of a porous layer introduces an additional permeability-dependent destabilizing mechanism that fundamentally modifies these classical trends. Consequently, particle loading can reduce the critical Reynolds number at sufficiently high permeability, even in parameter regimes where particles stabilize the corresponding rigid-wall flow. The coupled formulation also introduces additional disturbance branches associated with fluid-particle coupling near the permeable interface. Although these modes remain stable across the parameter space investigated, they modify the eigenspectrum and influence the dominant instability by altering coupling pathways. Furthermore, unlike impermeable-wall Couette-Poiseuille flow, where increasing the Couette component generally stabilizes the flow, the porous-wall configuration exhibits a monotonic decrease in the critical Reynolds number over the range examined. These results demonstrate that porous boundaries can fundamentally alter established stability behavior in particle-laden shear flows through permeability-dependent coupling between the suspension and the porous substrate.