Reservoir computing is applied to model the large-scale evolution and the resulting low-order turbulence statistics of a two-dimensional turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection flow at a Rayleigh number ${\rm Ra}=10^7$ and a Prandtl number ${\rm Pr}=7$ in an extended domain with an aspect ratio of 6. Our data-driven approach which is based on a long-term direct numerical simulation of the convection flow comprises a two-step procedure. (1) Reduction of the original simulation data by a Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) snapshot analysis and subsequent truncation to the first 150 POD modes which are associated with the largest total energy amplitudes. (2) Setup and optimization of a reservoir computing model to describe the dynamical evolution of these 150 degrees of freedom and thus the large-scale evolution of the convection flow. The quality of the prediction of the reservoir computing model is comprehensively tested. At the core of the model is the reservoir, a very large sparse random network charcterized by the spectral radius of the corresponding adjacency matrix and a few further hyperparameters which are varied to investigate the quality of the prediction. Our work demonstrates that the reservoir computing model is capable to model the large-scale structure and low-order statistics of turbulent convection which can open new avenues for modeling mesoscale convection processes in larger circulation models.
The claim by He et al. [Physical Review Letters 108, 024502 (2012)] that their experiment reached the 'ultimate' regime of turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection is not justified by their data.
This letter confirms the existence of heat transfer enhancement (HTE) and reduction (HTR) in turbulent natural convection with polymer additives. HTE and HTR were numerically predicted by Benzi et al.(PRL, 104, 024502, 2010) in homogenous turbulent convection, but experiments by Ahlers & Nikolaenko(PRL, 104, 034503, 2010) in turbulent natural convection observed HTR only. Using direct numerical simulation of natural convection, the present study reconciles earlier numerical and experimental work on the basis of the dominant role of polymer length in the polymer dynamics in extensional flows.
Technische Universität Ilmenau（伊尔梅瑙工业大学）；Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（印度理工学院坎普尔分校）
In this paper, we develop a multivariate regression model and a neural network model to predict the Reynolds number (Re) and Nusselt number in turbulent thermal convection. We compare their predictions with those of earlier models of convection: Grossmann-Lohse~[Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{86}, 3316 (2001)], revised Grossmann-Lohse~[Phys. Fluids \textbf{33}, 015113 (2021)], and Pandey-Verma [Phys. Rev. E \textbf{94}, 053106 (2016)] models. We observe that although the predictions of all the models are quite close to each other, the machine learning models developed in this work provide the best m…
Large-scale patterns, which are well-known from the spiral defect chaos regime of thermal convection at Rayleigh numbers $Ra < 10^4$, continue to exist in three-dimensional numerical simulations of turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in extended cylindrical cells with an aspect ratio $Γ=50$ and $Ra>10^5$. They are uncovered when the turbulent fields are averaged in time and turbulent fluctuations are thus removed. We apply the Boussinesq closure to estimate turbulent viscosities and diffusivities, respectively. The resulting turbulent Rayleigh number $Ra_{\ast}$, that describes the convection…
Coherent large-scale circulations of turbulent thermal convection in air have been studied experimentally in a rectangular box heated from below and cooled from above using Particle Image Velocimetry. The hysteresis phenomenon in turbulent convection was found by varying the temperature difference between the bottom and the top walls of the chamber (the Rayleigh number was changed within the range of $10^7 - 10^8$). The hysteresis loop comprises the one-cell and two-cells flow patterns while the aspect ratio is kept constant ($A=2 - 2.23$). We found that the change of the sign of the degree of…
We present a fluid dynamics video which illustrates the dynamics of the velocity field in the boundary layer in a turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection flow. The data are obtained from direct numerical simulation.
We investigate the utility of the convex hull of many Lagrangian tracers to analyze transport properties of turbulent flows with different anisotropy. In direct numerical simulations of statistically homogeneous and stationary Navier-Stokes turbulence, neutral fluid Boussinesq convection, and MHD Boussinesq convection a comparison with Lagrangian pair dispersion shows that convex hull statistics capture the asymptotic dispersive behavior of a large group of passive tracer particles. Moreover, convex hull analysis provides additional information on the sub-ensemble of tracers that on average di…
Measurements of heat transport, as expressed by the Nusselt number $Nu$, are reported for turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection of water containing up to 120 ppm by weight of poly-[ethylene oxide] with a molecular weight of $4\times10^6$ g/mole. Over the Rayleigh number range $ 5\times 10^9 \alt Ra \alt 7 \times 10^{10}$ $Nu$ is smaller than it is for pure water by up to 10%.
Weakly-rotating turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection was studied experimentally and numerically. With increasing rotation and large enough Rayleigh number an abrupt transition from a turbulent state with nearly rotation-independent heat transport to another turbulent state with enhanced heat transfer is observed at a critical inverse Rossby number $1/Ro_c \simeq 0.4$. Whereas for $1/Ro < 1/Ro_c$ the strength of the large-scale convection-roll is either enhanced or essentially unmodified depending on parameters, its strength is increasingly diminished beyond $1/Ro_c$ where it competes with Ekma…
In this paper we employ renormalized viscosity and thermal diffusivity to construct a subgrid-scale model for large eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent thermal convection. For LES, we add $ν_\mathrm{ren} \propto Π_u^{1/3} (π/Δ)^{-1/3}$ to the kinematic viscosity; here $Π_u$ is the turbulent kinetic energy flux, and $Δ$ is the grid spacing. In our model, the turbulent Prandtl number is unity. We performed LES of turbulent thermal convection on a $128^3$ grid and compare the results with direct numerical simulation (DNS) on a $512^3$ grid. There is a good agreement between the LES and DNS results…
Multiple chaotic and turbulent regimes in Rayleigh-Bénard convection have been studied and classified from the onset of deterministic chaos to the fully developed turbulence using the distributed chaos approach supported by results of laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. It is shown that the regimes can replace each other depending on value of the Rayleigh number and location in the convection cell (in the bulk of the flow or in the boundary layers). The inertial-buoyancy and helicity based invariants play crucial role in the formation of the regimes. Transition from the classical…
We report a new thermal boundary layer equation for turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection for Prandtl number Pr>1 that takes into account the effect of turbulent fluctuations. These fluctuations are neglected in existing equations, which are based on steady-state and laminar assumptions. Using this new equation, we derive analytically the mean temperature profiles in two limits: (a) Pr>1, Pr~1 and (b) Pr>>1. These two theoretical predictions are in excellent agreement with the results of our direct numerical simulations for Pr=4.38 (water) and Pr=2547.9 (glycerol) respectively.
The influence of symmetrical non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (SNOB) effect on statistical and scaling properties of temperature field in turbulent convection is investigated experimentally in $SF_{6}$ in the vicinity of its gas-liquid critical point (CP). The main conclusion of the studies is that besides the strong $Ra$ and $Pr$ dependence of the rms of temperature fluctuations normalized by the temperature difference across the cell, different from the Oberbeck-Boussinesq (OB) case of turbulent convection, all rest of statistical and scaling properties of temperature field discussed in details are t…
The progress in our understanding of several aspects of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection is reviewed. The focus is on the question of how the Nusselt number and the Reynolds number depend on the Rayleigh number Ra and the Prandtl number Pr, and on how the thicknesses of the thermal and the kinetic boundary layers scale with Ra and Pr. Non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq effects and the dynamics of the large-scale convection-roll are addressed as well. The review ends with a list of challenges for future research on the turbulent Rayleigh-Benard system.
We employ detailed numerical simulations to probe the mechanism of flow reversals in two-dimensional turbulent convection. We show that the reversals occur via vortex reconnection of two attracting corner rolls having same sign of vorticity, thus leading to major restructuring of the flow. Large fluctuations in heat transport are observed during the reversal due to this flow reconfiguration. The flow configurations during the reversals have been analyzed quantitatively using large-scale modes. Using these tools, we also show why flow reversals occur for a restricted range of Rayleigh and Prand…
Turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in a closed cylindrical cell is studied in the Lagrangian frame of reference with the help of three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. The aspect ratio of the cell Gamma is varied between 1 and 12, and the Rayleigh number Ra between 10^7 and 10^9. The Prandtl number Pr is fixed at 0.7. It is found that both the pair dispersion of the Lagrangian tracer particles and the statistics of the acceleration components measured along the particle trajectories depend on the aspect ratio for a fixed Rayleigh number for the parameter range covered in our studies…
Thermal convection in fluid layers heated from below are usually realized experimentally as well as treated theoretically with fixed boundaries on which conditions for the temperature and the velocity field are prescribed. The thermal and velocity boundary layers attached to the upper and lower boundaries determine to a large extent the properties of turbulent convection at high Rayleigh numbers. Fixed boundaries are often absent in natural realizations of thermal convection. This paper studies the properties of convection driven by a planar heat source below a cooling source of equal size imm…
It is shown that helicity dynamics dominates spectral distribution of the velocity fluctuations in turbulent thermal convection at moderate and large values of the Rayleigh number (distributed chaos and scaling respectively). The large-scale circulation (wind) in the turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection is especially sensitive to the helicity dynamics and its chaotic reversals can be associated with the reversals of the mean helicity sign (the ergodic restoration of the reflectional symmetry in a long run). Results of the laboratory experiments and measurements in the free atmospheric convecti…
Optimal control of turbulent mixed-convection flows has attracted considerable attention from researchers. Numerical algorithms such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are powerful tools that allow to perform global optimization. These algorithms are particularly of great interest in complex optimization problems where cost functionals may lack smoothness and regularity. In turbulent flow optimization, the hybridization of GA with high fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is extremely demanding in terms of computational time and memory storage. Thus, alternative approaches aiming to alleviate …
We conduct direct numerical simulations for turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection, driven simultaneously by two scalar components (say, temperature and salt concentration) with different molecular diffusivities, and measure the respective fluxes and the Reynolds number. To account for the results, we generalize the Grossmann-Lohse theory for traditional RB convections~(Grossmann and Lohse, J. Fluid Mech., 407, 27-56; Phys. Rev. Lett., 86, 3316-3319; Stevens et al., J. Fluid Mech., 730, 295-308) to this two-scalar turbulent convection. Our numerical results suggest that the generalized theo…
Turbulent thermal convection is characterized by the formation of large-scale structures and strong spatial inhomogeneity. This work addresses the relative heat transport contributions of the large-scale plume ejecting versus plume impacting zones in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection. Based on direct numerical simulations of the two dimensional (2-D) problem, we show the existence of a crossover in the wall heat transport from initially impacting dominated to ultimately ejecting dominated at a Rayleigh number of $Ra\approx 3 \times 10^{11}$. This is consistent with the trends observed in 3-…
Turbulent convection processes in nature are often found to be organized in a hierarchy of plume structures and flow patterns. The gradual aggregation of convection cells or granules to a supergranule which eventually fills the whole horizontal layer is reported and analysed in spectral element direct numerical simulations of three-dimensional turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection at an aspect ratio of $60$. The formation proceeds over a time span of more than $10^4$ convective time units for the largest accessible Rayleigh number and occurs only when the turbulence is driven by a constant heat…
We study an effect of large-scale coherent structures on global properties of turbulent convection in laboratory experiments in air flow in a rectangular chamber with aspect ratios $A \approx 2$ and $A\approx 4$ (with the Rayleigh numbers varying in the range from $5 \times 10^6$ to $10^8$). The large-scale coherent structures comprise the one-cell and two-cell flow patterns. We found that a main contribution to the turbulence kinetic energy production in turbulent convection with large-scale coherent structures is due to the non-uniform large-scale motions. Turbulence in large Rayleigh number…
We revisit a phenomenological description of turbulent thermal convection along the lines proposed originally by Gough (1965) in which eddies grow solely by extracting energy from the unstably stratified mean state and are subsequently destroyed by internal shear instability. This work is part of an ongoing investigation for finding a procedure to calculate the turbulent fluxes of heat and momentum in the presence of a shearing background flow in stars.
We investigate the anisotropy in turbulent convection in a 3D box using direct numerical simulation. We compute the anisotropic parameter $A = u_\perp^{2}/(2u_{\parallel}^{2})$, where $u_{\perp}$ and $u_{\parallel}$ are the components of velocity perpendicular and parallel to the buoyancy direction, the shell and ring spectra, and shell-to-shell energy transfers. We observe that the flow is nearly isotropic for the Prandtl number $\mathrm{Pr} \approx 1$, but the anisotropy increases with the Prandtl number. For $\mathrm{Pr}=\infty$, $A \approx 0.3$, thus anisotropy is not very significant even…
This paper deals with determination of turbulent convection velocities from particle image velocimetry (PIV). Turbulent convection velocities are of interest because they can be used to map temporal information into space. Convection velocity can be defined in several different ways. One approach is to use the phase-spectrum of two signals with a time-separation. Obtaining convection velocity per wavenumber involves determining a spatial spectrum. PIV data is limited in spatial resolution and sample length. The influence of truncation of both spatial resolution and frequency resolution is inve…
The possibility of subcritical behaviour in the geostrophic turbulence regime of rapidly rotating thermally driven convection is explored. In this regime a non-local inverse energy transfer may compete with the more traditional and local direct cascade. We show that, even for control parameters for which no inverse cascade has previously been observed, a subcritical transition towards a large-scale vortex state can occur when the system is initialized with a vortex dipole of finite amplitude. This new example of bistability in a turbulent flow, which may not be specific to rotating convection,…
We revisit a phenomenological description of turbulent thermal convection along the lines proposed by Gough (1977) in which eddies grow solely by extracting energy from the unstably stratified mean state and are subsequently destroyed by internal shear instability. This work is part of an ongoing investigation for finding a procedure to calculate the turbulent fluxes of heat and momentum in the presence of a shearing background flow in stars.
A mean-field theory of differential rotation in a density stratified turbulent convection has been developed. This theory is based on a combined effect of the turbulent heat flux and anisotropy of turbulent convection on the Reynolds stress. A coupled system of dynamical budget equations consisting in the equations for the Reynolds stress, the entropy fluctuations and the turbulent heat flux has been solved. To close the system of these equations, the spectral tau approach which is valid for large Reynolds and Peclet numbers, has been applied. The adopted model of the background turbulent conv…
We study turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection over four decades of Rayleigh numbers 4E8 < Ra < 2E12, while harmonically modulating the temperatures of the plates of our cylindrical cell. We probe the flow by temperature sensors placed in the cell interior and embedded in the highly conducting copper plates and detect thermal waves propagating at modulation frequency in the bulk of the convective flow. We confirm the recent numerical prediction [PRL 125, 154502 (2020)] of the significant enhancement of Nusselt number and report its dependence on the frequency and amplitude of the temperature mo…
We study shallow moist Rayleigh-Benard convection in the Boussinesq approximation in three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. The thermodynamics of phase changes is approximated by a piecewise linear equation of state close to the phase boundary. The impact of phase changes on the turbulent fluctuations and the transfer of buoyancy through the layer is discussed as a function of the Rayleigh number and the ability to form liquid water. The enhanced buoyancy flux due to phase changes is compared with dry convection reference cases and related to the cloud cover in the convection layer. T…
Recent findings suggest that wall-bounded turbulent flow can take different statistically stationary turbulent states, with different transport properties, even for the very same values of the control parameters. What state the system takes depends on the initial conditions. Here we analyze the multiple states in large-aspect ratio ($Γ$) two-dimensional turbulent Rayleigh--Bénard flow with no-slip plates and horizontally periodic boundary conditions as model system. We determine the number $n$ of convection rolls, their mean aspect ratios $Γ_r = Γ/n$, and the corresponding transport properties…
A model for the large-scale circulation (LSC) dynamics of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection is presented. It consists of two stochastic ordinary differential equations motivated by the Navier-Stokes equation, one each for the strength and the azimuthal orientation of the LSC. Stochastic forces represent phenomenologically the action of the turbulent fluctuations on the LSC. Without adjustable parameters, the model yields a meandering LSC with occasional rotations, and with more rare cessations that occur a few times per day -- differing only by about a factor of two from experiment. Also as…
The boundary layer flow in a Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell of rectangular shape has been visualized in this fluid dynamics video. The experiment has been undertaken in air at a Rayleigh number $Ra=1.3\times 10^{10}$ and a Prandtl number $Pr=0.7$. Various sequences captured at selected positions of the heating plate show that the boundary layer is a very transient flow region characterized by coherent structures that permanently evolve. It becomes fully turbulent in the areas where the large-scale circulation impinge or leave the bottom plate.
We explore the generalization properties of an echo state network applied as a reduced dynamical model to predict flux-driven two-dimensional turbulent convection. To this end, we consider a convection domain at fixed height with a variable ratio of buoyancy fluxes at the top and bottom boundaries, which break the top-down symmetry in comparison to the standard Rayleigh-Bénard case thus leading to highly asymmetric mean and fluctuation profiles across the layer. Our direct numerical simulation model describes a convective boundary layer in a simple way. The data are used to train and test a re…
In turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection, a large-scale circulation (LSC) develops in a nearly vertical plane, and is maintained by rising and falling plumes detaching from the unstable thermal boundary layers. Rare but large fluctuations in the LSC amplitude can lead to extinction of the LSC (a cessation event), followed by the re-emergence of another LSC with a different (random) azimuthal orientation. We extend previous models of the LSC dynamics to include momentum and thermal diffusion in the azimuthal plane, and calculate the tails of the probability distributions of both the amplitude an…
Rayleigh--Bénard convection, which is the buoyancy-induced motion of a fluid enclosed between two horizontal plates, is an idealised setup to study thermal convection. We analyse the modes that transport the most heat between the plates by computing the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of numerical data. Instead of the usual POD ansatz of finding modes that describe the energy best, we propose a method that is optimal in describing the heat transport. Thereby, we can determine the modes with the major influence on the heat transport and the coherent structures in the convection cell. We a…
Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in slender cylindrical cells exhibits rich dynamics of the large-scale circulation (LSC), with several rolls stacked on top of each other. We propose that the elliptical instability is the mechanism which causes the twisting and breaking of the LSC into multiple rolls and that the volume-averaged heat and momentum transport, represented by the Nusselt number and Reynolds number, is generally weaker for larger number $n$ of the LSC rolls. This is supported by direct numerical simulations for $Ra=5\times10^5$, $Pr=0.1$, $H=5D$ and $1\leq~n\leq4$.
The spectra of turbulent heat flux $\mathrm{H}(k)$ in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with and without uniform rotation are presented. The spectrum $\mathrm{H}(k)$ scales with wave number $k$ as $\sim k^{-2}$. The scaling exponent is almost independent of the Taylor number $\mathrm{Ta}$ and Prandtl number $\mathrm{Pr}$ for higher values of the reduced Rayleigh number $r$ ($ > 10^3$). The exponent, however, depends on $\mathrm{Ta}$ and $\mathrm{Pr}$ for smaller values of $r$ ($<10^3$). The probability distribution functions of the local heat fluxes are non-Gaussian and have exponential tails.
The shape of velocity and temperature profiles near the horizontal conducting plates in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection are studied numerically and experimentally over the Rayleigh number range $10^8\lesssim Ra\lesssim3\times10^{11}$ and the Prandtl number range $0.7\lesssim Pr\lesssim5.4$. The results show that both the temperature and velocity profiles well agree with the classical Prandtl-Blasius laminar boundary-layer profiles, if they are re-sampled in the respective dynamical reference frames that fluctuate with the instantaneous thermal and velocity boundary-layer thicknesses.
We invoke the concepts of magnetic boundary layer and magnetic Rayleigh number and use the magnetic energy dissipation rates in the bulk and the boundary layers to derive some scaling laws expressing how Nusselt number depends on magnetic Rayleigh number, Prandtl number and magnetic Prandtl number for the simple case of turbulent magnetohydrodynamic Rayleigh-Benard convection in the presence of uniform vertical magnetic field.
We report the existence of two new limiting turbulent regimes in horizontal convection (HC) using direct numerical simulations at intermediate to low Prandtl numbers. The flow driven by a horizontal gradient along a horizontal surface, perpendicular to the acceleration of gravity is shown to transition to turbulence in the plume and the core, modifying the rate of heat and momentum transport. These transitions set a sequence of scaling laws blending the theoretical arguments from both the Shishkina, Grossmann & Lohse (SGL) theory with the Hughes, Griffiths & Mullarney (HGM) regime. These resul…
Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection displays a large-scale order in the form of rolls and cells on lengths larger than the layer height once the fluctuations of temperature and velocity are removed. These turbulent superstructures are reminiscent of the patterns close to the onset of convection. They are analyzed by numerical simulations of turbulent convection in fluids at different Prandtl number ranging from 0.005 to 70 and for Rayleigh numbers up to $10^7$. For each case, we identify characteristic scales and times that separate the fast, small-scale turbulent fluctuations from the gradua…
We derive scaling relations for the thermal dissipation rate in the bulk and in the boundary layers for moderate and large Prandtl number (Pr) convection. Using direct numerical simulations of Rayleigh-Bénard convection, we show that the thermal dissipation in the bulk is suppressed compared to passive scalar dissipation. The suppression is stronger for large Pr. We further show that the dissipation in the boundary layers dominates that in the bulk for both moderate and large Pr. The probability distribution functions of thermal dissipation rate, both in the bulk and in the boundary layers, ar…
The corner roll (CR) in the Rayleigh-Bénard (RB) convection accounts for the behaviors of heat transport and convection flow at the corner. Streamlines of the three-dimensional direct numerical simulations for $10^8<Ra<5\times10^9$ show that CR presents well-defined similarity and multi-layer structure. A stream function for CR is developed by homotopy and the structure ensemble dynamics. The model presents the scaling of Reynolds number of corner roll $Re_{cr}\sim Ra^{1/4}$. Scaling of CR scale $r = 0.77 Ra^{-0.085}$ indicates strong near-wall shearing induced by wind and provides a probabili…
We study rotating homogeneous turbulent convection forced by a mean vertical temperature gradient by means of direct numerical simulations (DNS) in the Boussinesq approximation in a rotating frame. In the absence of rotationour results are in agreement with the "ultimate regime of thermal convection" for the scaling of the Nusselt and Reynolds numbers vs Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers. Rotation is found to increase both $Nu$ and $Re$ at fixed $Ra$ with a maximum enhancement for intermediate values of the Rossby numbers, qualitatively similar, but with stronger intensity, to what observed in Rayl…
We present measurements of the orientation theta_0(t) of the large-scale circulation (LSC) of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection in cylindrical cells of aspect ratio 1. theta_0(t) undergoes irregular reorientations. It contains reorientation events by rotation through angles Delta theta with a monotonically decreasing probability distribution p(Delta theta), and by cessations (where the LSC stops temporarily) with a uniform p(Delta theta). Reorientations have Poissonian statistics in time. The amplitude of the LSC and the magnitude of the azimuthal rotation rate have a negative correlation.
It is shown that correlation function of the mean wind velocity generated by a turbulent thermal convection (Rayleigh number $Ra \sim 10^{11}$) exhibits exponential decay with a very long correlation time, while corresponding largest Lyapunov exponent is certainly positive. These results together with the reconstructed phase portrait indicate presence of chaotic component in the examined mean wind. Telegraph approximation is also used to study relative contribution of the chaotic and stochastic components to the mean wind fluctuations and an equilibrium between these components has been studie…
Due to large scale flow inhomogeneities and the effects of temperature, turbulence small-scale structure in thermal convection is still an active field of investigation, especially considering sophisticated Lagrangian statistics. Here we experimentally study Lagrangian pair dispersion (one of the canonical problems of Lagrangian turbulence) in a Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell. A sufficiently high temperature difference is imposed on a horizontal layer of fluid to observe a turbulent flow. We perform Lagrangian tracking of sub-millimetric particles on a large measurement volume including part …
We present a numerical study of Rayleigh-Bénard convection disturbed by a longitudinal wind. Our results show that under the action of the wind, the vertical heat flux through the cell initially decreases, due to the mechanism of plumes-sweeping, and then increases again when turbulent forced convection dominates over the buoyancy. As a result, the Nusselt number is a non-monotonic function of the shear Reynolds number. We provide a simple model that captures with good accuracy all the dynamical regimes observed. We expect that our findings can lead the way to a more fundamental understanding …
We perform direct numerical simulations of rotating Rayleigh--Bénard convection of fluids with low ($Pr=0.1$) and high ($Pr=5$) Prandtl numbers in a horizontally periodic layer with no-slip top and bottom boundaries. At both Prandtl numbers, we demonstrate the presence of an upscale transfer of kinetic energy that leads to the development of domain-filling vortical structures. Sufficiently strong buoyant forcing and rotation foster the quasi-two-dimensional turbulent state of the flow, despite the formation of plume-like vertical disturbances promoted by so-called Ekman pumping from the viscou…
Experimental and numerical data for the heat transfer as a function of the Rayleigh-, Prandtl-, and Rossby numbers in turbulent rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection are presented. For relatively small $Ra ~ 10^8$ and large Pr modest rotation can enhance the heat transfer by up to 30%. At larger Ra there is less heat-transfer enhancement, and at small Pr = 0.7. there is no heat-transfer enhancement at all. We suggest that the small-Pr behavior is due to the breakdown of the heat-transfer-enhancing Ekman pumping because of larger thermal diffusion.
We report an experimental study of the three-dimensional spatial structure of the low frequency temperature oscillations in a cylindrical Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell. It is found that thermal plumes are not emitted periodically, but randomly and continuously, from the top and bottom plates. We further found that the oscillation of the temperature field does not originate from the boundary layers, but rather is a result of the horizontal motion of the hot ascending and cold descending fluids being modulated by the twisting and sloshing motion of the bulk flow field.
Measurements of the Nusselt number $Nu$ and of temperature variations $ΔT_b$ in the bulk fluid are reported for turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection of a cylindrical sample. They cover the Rayleigh-number range $10^{9} \alt Ra \alt 3\times 10^{14}$ using He (Prandtl number $Pr = 0.67$), N$_2$ ($Pr = 0.72$) and SF$_6$ ($Pr = 0.79$ to 0.84) at pressures up to 15 bars and near-ambient temperatures. The sample had a height $L=2.24$m and diameter $D = 1.12$m and was located in a new High-Pressure Convection Facility (HPCF) at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen,…
