Influence of boundary conditions on the convective stability of a rotating horizontal layer of liquid

A theoretical study is made of the critical curves for the onset of convection in a plane horizontal layer of liquid rotating with constant angular velocity for different conditions on the boundary of the layer. It is shown that, in contrast to Chandresekhar's curves 1] obtained under the condition of constancy of the temperature on the boundaries, the curves for a constant heat flux lie significantly lower, so that convection occurs earlier for all Taylor numbers. At large Taylor numbers all the stability curves, as in 1], tend to the asymptotes R_C Ta^2/3, where Ta is the Taylor number and R_C is the critical Rayleigh number. A similar investigation for a nonrotating liquid was made in 2].Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 3, pp. 124–129, May–June, 1988.We thank G. S. Golitsyn for the proposed subject and constant interest in the work.