The ultimate state of thermal convection in Rayleigh-Taylor turbulence

This paper discusses the so-called ultimate state of thermal convection, first proposed by Kraichnan almost 50 years ago and recently observed in numerical simulations of turbulent convection in the absence of boundaries. We focus on numerical simulations of turbulence generated by the Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a wide range of Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers. Our results point out to the conclusion that RT turbulence provides a natural realization of the ultimate state of thermal convection thus highlighting the relationship between the absence of boundaries and the emergence of the ultimate state scaling for global statistical quantities.     

Intermittency of temperature field in turbulent convection

The scaling behavior of the temperature structure functions in turbulent convection is found to be different for length scales below and above the Bolgiano scale. Both sets of the exponents are well described by log-Poisson statistics. The parameter beta(T) which measures the degree of intermittency is the same for the two regimes of scales and is consistent with the corresponding value for the passive scalar field. A balance between thermal forcing and nonlinear velocity advection, which is a key ingredient leading to Bolgiano scaling, is also checked.     

竖直圆管中超临界压力CO2对流换热实验研究

本文对超临界压力CO2在竖直加热圆管内的对流换热进行了实验研究,比较了不同流向、不同热流密度等对流动和换热的影响。实验结果表明,管内径为2mm时,在低进口Re条件下,由于浮升力影响导致层流向湍流提前转变, 对流换热增强;与向上流动相比,向下流动更易由层流转变为湍流;向下流动的换热要强于向上流动,表明浮升力对换热有很大影响。对于管内径为0．27 mm的微细圆管,当进口Re高于104时,浮升力的影响可以忽略,对流换热系数的变化完全由物性的变化尤其是cp的变化导致。     

Measured local heat transport in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Local convective heat flux in turbulent thermal convection is obtained from simultaneous velocity and temperature measurements in an aspect-ratio-one convection cell filled with water. It is found that fluctuations of the vertical heat flux are highly intermittent and are determined primarily by the thermal plumes in the system. The experiment reveals a unique mechanism for the heat transport in turbulent convection.     

Scaling of the local convective heat flux in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Local convective heat flux J(r) in turbulent thermal convection is obtained from simultaneous velocity and temperature measurements in a cylindrical cell filled with water. The measured J(r) in the bulk region shows a different scaling behavior with varying Rayleigh numbers compared with that measured in the plume-dominated regions near the sidewall and near the lower conducting plate. The local transport measurements thus allow us to disentangle boundary and bulk contributions to the total heat flux and directly check their respective scaling behavior against the theoretical predictions.     

多离散源驱动的双扩散自然对流传输结构

本文通过"矢量线,,可视化方法,解析了一个方腔内由双离散热源和污染源驱动的双扩散自然对流系统的传输结构.发现在不同浮升力比下,该系统存在着三种明显不同的宏观传输结构,即由热浮升力主导的传输结构,由热质浮升力共同支配的传输结构以及由质浮升力主导的传输结构.     

Dependence of heat transport on the strength and shear rate of prescribed circulating flows

We study numerically the dependence of heat transport on the maximum velocity and shear rate of physical circulating flows, which are prescribed to have the key characteristics of the large-scale mean flow observed in turbulent convection. When the side-boundary thermal layer is thinner than the viscous boundary layer, the Nusselt number (Nu), which measures the heat transport, scales with the normalized shear rate to an exponent 1/3. On the other hand, when the side-boundary thermal layer is thicker, the dependence of Nu on the Peclet number, which measures the maximum velocity, or the normalized shear rate when the viscous boundary layer thickness is fixed, is generally not a power law. Scaling behavior is obtained only in an asymptotic regime. The relevance of our results to the problem of heat transport in turbulent convection is also discussed. Received 28 November 2001 Published online 25 June 2002     

Cascades of velocity and temperature fluctuations in buoyancy-driven thermal turbulence

Direct multipoint measurements of the velocity and temperature fields have been made in a turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell. In the central region of the cell it is found that both velocity and temperature exhibit the same scaling behavior that one would find for the velocity and for a passive scalar in homogeneous and isotropic Navier-Stokes turbulence. This is despite the fact that energy is pumped into the system vertically via buoyancy. Near the cell's sidewall where thermal plumes abound, vertical velocity and temperature exhibit different scalings. A model that takes into account both buoyancy and energy dissipation is proposed and its predictions agree well with the sidewall experimental results.     

Scaling properties of the temperature field in convective turbulence

We report the scaling properties of temperature in turbulent convection in water. In the central region of the convection cell, we find that the peak frequency of the temperature dissipation spectra may be identified as the "Bolgiano frequency," with respect to which the temperature power spectra are universal functions; and that the usual inertial range is taken up entirely by the buoyancy subrange, so that a "high frequency" scaling subrange emerges only through an extended-self-similarity-type analysis. Moreover, the buoyancy subrange assumes the value of 2/5 predicted for the Bolgiano-Obukhov scaling only in the central region of the cell; in the mixing zone the exponent for the high frequency scaling exponent has a value of 2/3.     

Aspect-ratio dependence of charge transport in turbulent electroconvection

We present measurements of the normalized charge transport or Nusselt number Nu as a function of the aspect ratio Gamma for turbulent convection in an electrically driven film. In analogy with turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection, we develop the relevant theoretical framework in which we discuss the local power-law scaling of Nu with a dimensionless electrical forcing parameter R. For these experiments where 10(4) less, similar R less, similar 2 x 10(5) we find that Nu approximately F(Gamma)Rgamma with either gamma=0.26 (+/-0.02) or gamma=0.20 (+/-0.03), in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions of gamma=1/4 and 1/5. Our measurements of the aspect-ratio dependence of Nu for 0.3相似文献   

Extraction of plumes in turbulent thermal convection

We present a scheme to extract the velocity of buoyant structures in turbulent thermal convection from simultaneous local velocity and temperature measurements. Applying this scheme to measurements taken at positions within the convection cell where the buoyant structures are dominated by plumes, we obtain the temperature dependence of the plume velocity and understand our results using the equations of motion. We further obtain the scaling behavior of the average local heat flux in the vertical direction at the cell center with the Rayleigh number and find that the scaling exponent is different from that measured for the Nusselt number. This difference leads to the conclusion that heat cannot be mainly transported through the central region of the convection cell.     

Scaling behavior for the onset of convection in a colloidal suspension

We investigate the early stages of mass convection in a colloidal suspension at high solutal Rayleigh number Ras. From the time evolution of shadowgraph images and by assuming a diffusive growth of the boundary layers we obtain an indirect measurement of the concentration boundary layer thickness delta* at the onset of convection. We show that the dimensionless boundary layer thickness delta=delta*/d scales as Ra-ps, where Ras=Rasdelta is a modified solutal Rayleigh number for convection which accounts for the actual density unbalance and d is the thickness of the sample layer. This scaling behavior is analogous to that reported at steady state for turbulent convection in simple fluids. We find p=0.35, a value compatible with the exponent 1/3, reported for turbulent heat convection in simple fluids at steady state.     

湍流热对流中的若干问题

对流是自然界中的一种常见现象,与人们的日常生产、生活息息相关。作为湍流和非线性系统的一个简单模型,在20世纪90年代以后,人们对热对流进行了系统而深入的研究。然而,直到现在,人们对湍流热对流的规律和本质仍然所知有限。文章主要从湍流传热、相干结构、大尺度环流和湍流中脉动量的小尺度统计等四个方面,简要地介绍了近年来湍流热对流的一些新进展。     

New perspectives in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Recent experimental, numerical and theoretical advances in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection are presented. Particular emphasis is given to the physics and structure of the thermal and velocity boundary layers which play a key role for the better understanding of the turbulent transport of heat and momentum in convection at high and very high Rayleigh numbers. We also discuss important extensions of Rayleigh-Bénard convection such as non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq effects and convection with phase changes.     

New perspectives in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Recent experimental, numerical and theoretical advances in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection are presented. Particular emphasis is given to the physics and structure of the thermal and velocity boundary layers which play a key role for the better understanding of the turbulent transport of heat and momentum in convection at high and very high Rayleigh numbers. We also discuss important extensions of Rayleigh-Bénard convection such as non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq effects and convection with phase changes.     

Torque scaling in turbulent Taylor-Couette flow with co- and counterrotating cylinders

We analyze the global transport properties of turbulent Taylor-Couette flow in the strongly turbulent regime for independently rotating outer and inner cylinders, reaching Reynolds numbers of the inner and outer cylinders of Re(i) = 2×10(6) and Re(o) = ±1.4×10(6), respectively. For all Re(i), Re(o), the dimensionless torque G scales as a function of the Taylor number Ta (which is proportional to the square of the difference between the angular velocities of the inner and outer cylinders) with a universal effective scaling law G ∝ Ta(0.88), corresponding to Nu(ω) ∝ Ta(0.38) for the Nusselt number characterizing the angular velocity transport between the inner and outer cylinders. The exponent 0.38 corresponds to the ultimate regime scaling for the analogous Rayleigh-Bénard system. The transport is most efficient for the counterrotating case along the diagonal in phase space with ω(o) ≈ -0.4ω(i).     

Flame speed and self-similar propagation of expanding turbulent premixed flames

In this Letter we present turbulent flame speeds and their scaling from experimental measurements on constant-pressure, unity Lewis number expanding turbulent flames, propagating in nearly homogeneous isotropic turbulence in a dual-chamber, fan-stirred vessel. It is found that the normalized turbulent flame speed as a function of the average radius scales as a turbulent Reynolds number to the one-half power, where the average radius is the length scale and the thermal diffusivity is the transport property, thus showing self-similar propagation. Utilizing this dependence it is found that the turbulent flame speeds from the present expanding flames and those from the Bunsen geometry in the literature can be unified by a turbulent Reynolds number based on flame length scales using recent theoretical results obtained by spectral closure of the transformed G equation.     

Effects of forcing in three-dimensional turbulent flows

We present the results of a numerical investigation of three-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic turbulence, stirred by a random forcing with a power-law spectrum, E(f)(k) approximately k(3-y). Numerical simulations are performed at different resolutions up to 512(3). We show that at varying the spectrum slope y, small-scale turbulent fluctuations change from a forcing independent to a forcing dominated statistics. We argue that the critical value separating the two behaviors, in three dimensions, is y(c)=4. When the statistics is forcing dominated, for yy(c), we find the same anomalous scaling measured in flows forced only at large scales. We connect these results with the issue of universality in turbulent flows.     

Gyrokinetic simulations of solar wind turbulence from ion to electron scales

A three-dimensional, nonlinear gyrokinetic simulation of plasma turbulence resolving scales from the ion to electron gyroradius with a realistic mass ratio is presented, where all damping is provided by resolved physical mechanisms. The resulting energy spectra are quantitatively consistent with a magnetic power spectrum scaling of k(-2.8) as observed in in situ spacecraft measurements of the "dissipation range" of solar wind turbulence. Despite the strongly nonlinear nature of the turbulence, the linear kinetic Alfvén wave mode quantitatively describes the polarization of the turbulent fluctuations. The collisional ion heating is measured at subion-Larmor radius scales, which provides evidence of the ion entropy cascade in an electromagnetic turbulence simulation.     

Transient mixed convection in a channel with two facing discretely heated semicircular cavities: Buoyancy,inclination angle,and channel aspect ratio effects

Space-averaged surface temperature distributions and overall Nusselt number measurements have been carried out to study the transient mixed convection heat transfer in a channel with two facing and symmetrically heated semicircular cavities. Effects of buoyancy, channel orientation, and channel aspect ratio on thermal behavior have been investigated from Re 500 to 1,500. Depending on the parametric set, steady, oscillatory, and irregular thermal regimes have been identified. The natural frequencies and time scales of the oscillatory regimes have been obtained using spectral analysis. Results show that with increase in channel aspect ratio, the heat transfer performance reduces for all inclination angles.