Boundary zonal flows in rapidly rotating turbulent thermal convection

Boundary layers in rotating weakly turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection

Richard J. A. M. Stevens, Herman J. H. Clercx, and Detlef Lohse Department of Science and Technology and J. M. Burgers Center for Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands and Department of Physics and J. M. Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics, Eindh...

Thermal boundary layers and heat flux in turbulent convection: The role of recirculating flows.

Structure of thermal boundary layers in turbulent RayleighBnard convection

We report high-resolution local-temperature measurements in the upper boundary layer of turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard (RB) convection with variable Rayleigh number Ra and aspect ratio Γ . The primary purpose of the work is to create a comprehensive data set of temperature profiles against which various phenomenological theories and numerical simulations can be tested. We performed two series of mea...

Spatial structure of the thermal boundary layer in turbulent convection

We have measured the mean temperature profiles T̄(z) and the thermal layer thickness d th(x ,y) at various horizontal positions on the lower plate of a cylindrical convection cell, using water as the working fluid. The Rayleigh number Ra in the experiment varied from 2310 to 2310. The normalized vertical temperature profiles measured at various positions x along the direction of large scale circ...

Thermal boundary layer equation for turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection.

We report a new thermal boundary layer equation for turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard 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 and (b)...