Weakly nonlinear convection in a porous layer with multiple horizontal partitions

We consider convection in a horizontally uniform fluid-saturated porous layer which is heated from below and which is split into a number of identical sublayers by impermeable and infinitesimally thin horizontal partitions. Rees and Genç (Int J Heat Mass Transfer 54:3081–3089, 2010) determined the onset criterion by means of a detailed analytical and numerical study of the corresponding dispersion relation and showed that this layered system behaves like the single-sublayer constant-heat-flux Darcy–Bénard problem when the number of sublayers becomes large. The aim of the present work is to use a weakly nonlinear analysis to determine whether the layered system also shares the property of the single-sublayer constant-heat-flux Darcy–Bénard problem by having square cells, as opposed to rolls, as the preferred planform for convection.