Melting of a vertical plate in porous medium controlled by forced convection of a dissimilar fluid

In this paper a boundary layer analysis is presented for the problem of melting of a flat plate embedded in a porous medium. The melting phenomenon is induced by forced convection of the ambient fluid. The ambient fluid and the melt are dissimilar. The density difference between the melt and the ambient fluid is responsible for the boundary layer flow in the melt region. The results of this paper document the dependence of the temperature and flow fields in the system, as well as the dependence of the local heat transfer rate at the solid/ melt interface on the dimensionless groups describing the physics of the problem.