Convection of a heat-generating fluid in a rotating horizontal cylinder

Thermal convection of a fluid in a horizontal cylinder rotating about its own axis with uniformly volume-distributed internal heat sources is experimentally investigated. The enclosure boundary temperature was kept constant. The threshold of the excitation of convective flows and their structure are studied as functions of the heat-release intensity and the rotation velocity. The experiments are performed with water and water-glycerin solutions. It is shown that rapidly rotating fluid is in a stable quasiequilibrium state, namely, the temperature distribution is axisymmetric and has a maximum at the center of the enclosure. It is found that with decrease in the rotation velocity a convective flow arises thresholdwise, in the form of vortex cells periodically arranged along the axis. The thermal convection in the rotating enclosure is shown to be determined by the effects of two different mechanisms. One of these is due to the centrifugal force of inertia and plays the stabilizing role, while the other, thermovibrational mechanism is connected with nonisothermal fluid oscillations under the action of gravity in the enclosure-fitted reference frame and is responsible for the occurrence of mean thermal convection. The boundaries of the convection generation are plotted in the plane of the governing dimensionless parameters and the heat transfer in the supercritical region is studied.     

Convective heat transfer in a rotating horizontal cylindrical fluid layer

This paper describes the thermal convection and heat transfer in a cylindrical fluid layer rotating around a horizontal axis, with various constant temperatures set at the layer boundaries. The influence of the rotational speed of the cylindrical fluid layer on the convective heat transfer in this layer is studied. The study results are presented as functions of dimensionless parameters that characterize the action of two convective mechanisms: centrifugal and thermal-oscillatory. It is shown that, with low rotational speed, the heat transfer is determined by quasistationary gravitational convection.     

Convective stability of fluid in a rotating horizontal annulus

The convective stability of quasi-equilibriumof a fluid layer formed by two horizontal coaxial cylindrical surfaces which have different temperatures and rotate at the same angular velocity about the axis of symmetry is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Consideration is carried out from the standpoint of thermal vibrational convection caused by the average lifting force generated as a result of vibrations of a nonisothermal fluid with respect to the cavity. The vibrations are induced by an external field. The action of the centrifugal force field is also taken into account. Stability of mechanical quasi-equilibrium with respect to monotonic plane perturbations, which are, as shown experimentally, the most dangerous, is studied within the framework of the linear analysis. The stability boundaries are constructed for layers of various relative thickness in the plane of control parameters, the centrifugal and vibrational Rayleigh numbers. The thresholds of excitation of two-dimensional convective structures obtained experimentally are in good agreement with the theoretical ones.     

Thermal Convection in a Plane Layer Rotating About a Horizontal Axis

The thermal convection of a fluid in a plane vertical layer with a cylindrical lateral boundary, which rotates uniformly about a horizontal symmetry axis, is investigated experimentally. The structure and excitation limit of the convective flows are studied as functions of the rotation frequency, the temperature difference between the layer boundaries, and the layer thickness. The determining dimensionless parameters are found. It is shown that the period-average gravity action produces convection in the form of hexagonally distributed cells stationary in the reference system tied to the cavity.     

Instability of small-amplitude convective flows in a rotating layer with free boundaries

The stability of steady convective flows in a horizontal layer with free boundaries, heated from below and rotating about a vertical axis, is studied in the Boussinesq approximation (Rayleigh-Bénard convection). The flows considered are convective rolls or square cells that are sums of two perpendicular rolls with equal wave numbers k. It is assumed that the Rayleigh number is almost critical in order for convective flows with a wave number k: R = R _c (k) + ε² to arise, the amplitude of the supercritical states being of the order of ε. It is shown that the flows are always unstable relative to perturbations that are the sum of one long-and two short-wave modes corresponding to linear rolls turned through small angles in opposite directions.     

Convection in rotating spherical layers with allowance for centrifugal forces

The investigation of convection in rotating spherical layers with a central gravitational field g(r) is very important for the study of the global motions in the atmospheres of large planets and the convective zones of stars. In recent years, many studies of these questions have been made (they have been reviewed, for example, by Yavorskaya and Belyaev [1]), but the centrifugal convective force has been ignored in all the numerical and analytic investigations. In some cases, for example, for large planets, the centrifugal force may reach an appreciable value, O.1g, and have a strong influence on the convective motion. The present paper studies the occurrence of convection in slowly rotating spherical layers with allowance for centrifugal forces. It is shown that the centrifugal force leads to the appearance in a layer of an axisymmetric flow, at the stability limit of which convective cells of banana or toroidal shape can develop. The latter are possible only in layers with undeformable boundaries at sufficiently large values of the Froude number. Irrespective of the form of the layer and the magnitude of the centrifugal force, the banana-shaped cells propagate in a wavelike manner in the direction opposite to the rotation. In the case of undeformable boundaries, the centrifugal force stabilizes the motion of the fluid as compared with the case of a layer at rest. Deformation of one or both of the boundaries under the influence of the centrifugal force leads to destabilization of the basic flow.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 2, pp. 14–21, March–April, 1984.     

Experimental investigation of helicoidal rolls in an advective flow over a hot horizontal surface

A digital tracer technique is applied to reconstruct the velocity fields in a convective flow developing in a rectangular cavity filled with a layer of fluid and having a bottom consisting of two heat exchangers kept at different temperatures. The upper boundary of the fluid is free. The structure of the secondary flows in the form of streamwise helicoidal rolls generated in the boundary layer over a hot plate is studied. It is shown that the centers of roll rotation coincide with temperature minima in the boundary layer, while the roll shape and dimensions vary with the distance from the temperature jump. With increase in the temperature difference the roll dimensions decrease but the velocity of their rotation increases.     

Convective instability of a rotating fluid

A physical system may be in thermodynamic equilibrium when participating as a whole in uniform rotational motion [1]. In particular, mechanical equilibrium of a liquid in a cavity rotating about a stationary axis with the constant angular velocity (solid-body rotation of the liquid) is possible. If the liquid is uniform in composition and isothermal, then such equilibrium, as shown in [2], is stable for all . However, in the case of a nonuniformly heated liquid, stability of the solid-state rotation is, generally speaking, impossible.The appearance of two steady-state force fields is associated with uniform rotation: the centrifugal field and the Coriolis force field. The former field forces the liquid elements which are less heated and therefore more dense to move away from the axis of rotation, displacing the less dense liquid layers (centrifugation). If we maintain in the liquid a temperature gradient which prevents the establishment of equilibrium stratification of the liquid, then with a suitable value of this gradient (the magnitude obviously depending on ) undamped flows—convection—will develop in the liquid. Thus, while in conventional gravitational convection the gravity field is the reason for the appearance of the Archimedes buoyant forces, in the rotating cavity the mixing of the nonuniformly heated liquid is caused by the centrifugal field. As soon as the convective flows arise the Coriolis forces come into play. Account for the latter, as is shown below, prevents reducing in a trivial fashion the study of convective stability of rotating liquid to the well-studied problems of gravitational convection.     

Effect of weak rotation on natural convection in a horizontal porous cylinder

Natural convection in a fluid saturated porous medium confined in a horizontal circular cylinder and rotating about its axis, with isothermal boundary conditions and uniform internal heat sink, is studied by both numerical and perturbation methods. No symmetry with respect to the vertical diameter is expected for the flow and temperature fields and the whole region must be involved in the computation. Only the weak rotation regime, for which the centrifugal force is negligible compared to gravity, is considered. Governing equations for the two-dimensional flow field are solved in both rotating and non-rotating coordinate systems. Results indicate that rotation significantly decreases the radial amplitude of fluid particle trajectories in the radial direction and thus reduces the overall heat transfer.     

Non-linear dynamics and pattern formation in a vertical fluid layer heated from the side

We study both experimentally and numerically the convective flow in a tall vertical slot with differently heated walls. The flow is investigated for the fluid with the Prandtl number Pr=26, which is large enough to ensure the traveling waves as primary instability and small enough to prevent boundary layer convection. The flow evolution is determined on the base of the visual observations, power spectra and amplitude analysis. In the numerical simulations of two- and three-dimensional flows, we accept an assumption of an infinite fluid layer. The satisfactory agreement with experiment is observed, and the sequence of convection states is discovered. It starts with a plane-parallel flow as primary solution, which becomes unstable to two counter-propagating waves. It is followed by a tertiary three-dimensional flow in the form of wavy traveling waves. As the Grashof number is increased even further, a chaotically oscillating cellular pattern consisting of the pieces of broken waves arises. The formation of a structure in the form of the vertical rolls chaotically modulated along axes concludes this complicated picture.     

Stability of free convection in a rotating porous layer distant from the axis of rotation

The stability and onset of convection in a rotating fluid saturated porous layer subject to a centrifugal body force and placed at an offset distance from the center of rotation is investigated analytically. The marginal stability criterion is established in terms of a critical centrifugal Rayleigh number and a critical wave number for different values of the parameter representing the dimensionless offset distance from the center of rotation. At the limit of an infinite distance from the center of rotation the results are identical to the convection resulting from heating a porous layer from below subject to the gravitational body force. At the other limit, when the parameter controlling the offset distance approaches zero, the results converge to previously found solutions for the convection in a porous layer adjacent to the axis of rotation. The results provide the stability map for all positive values of the parameter controlling the offset distance from the center of rotation, hence bridging the gap between the two extreme limit cases.     

Thermal Vibrational Convection in Rotating Cavities

The average vibrational motion of a nonisothermal fluid in a uniformly rotating cavity is described theoretically. Equations are obtained using the averaging technique in the high-frequency vibration approximation. It is found that the rotation significantly affects both the intensity of the average flows and the structure of the pulsatory velocity field generating resonance amplification of the fluid vibrations ar certain ratios of the rotation frequency and the force field oscillation frequency. This makes rotation an important controlling factor ensuring a strong averaged effect under relatively weak vibrational action. The problem of excitation of vibrational convection in a plane rotating layer is considered on the basis of the equations obtained when the vibration frequency substantially exceeds the rotation frequency.     

Thermal structure of convective vortex lattices

The thermal structure of the convective motions of a rotating plane layer of fluid is experimentally investigated in the regular vortex structure regime. It is found that in such a system the intense vortex motion leads to a temperature distribution such that the mean fluid temperature falls linearly from the bottom of the layer to the surface, the temperature gradient being determined by the rate of rotation and depth of the fluid. By dimensional analysis it is shown that this gradient corresponds to heat transfer in which the Nusselt number isolines are parallel to the convection curve. The horizontal structure of the temperature field is investigated; it corresponds to motion in which the fluid descends within a narrow vortex-sink and rises along the edges of a cylinder which determines the characteristic dimension of the structure in rotating fluid convection.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 6, pp. 160–166, November–December, 1987.The author wishes to thank G. S. Golitsyn for his constant interest in the work.     

Stability of thermocapillary advective flow in a slowly rotating liquid layer under microgravity conditions

The stability of thermocapillary flow developed in a slowly rotating fluid layer under microgravity conditions is investigated. Both boundaries of the layer are free and assumed to be plane. The tangential thermocapillary Marangoni force exerts on the boundaries, where heat transfer takes place in accordance with the Newton law, the temperature of the medium in the neighborhood of the boundaries being a linear function of the coordinates. The axis of rotation is perpendicular to the liquid layer, rotation is weak so that the centrifugal force can be neglected. Being the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations, the thermocapillary flow in question can be described analytically. The neutral curves which describe the wavenumber dependence of the critical Marangoni number for various Taylor numbers and various directions of the horizontal temperature gradient on the layer boundaries are obtained within the framework of the linear stability theory. The behavior of finite-amplitude perturbations beyond the stability threshold is studied numerically.     

The effect of an acoustic field on a secondary convective flow in a layer

The effect of a traveling sonic wave on a convective flow in a horizontal layer with a fixed linear temperature distribution on the boundaries is investigated. Convective rolls with axes parallel to the basic flow (lengthwise rolls) are considered. On the basis of a weakly nonlinear analysis, it is shown that the lengthwise rolls appear smoothly and the regular flows are stable near the stability threshold. A direct numerical simulation is performed. Secondary near-critical flow regimes and regimes corresponding to finite supercriticalities are investigated.     

Convection in a rotating medium above a thermally inhomogeneous horizontal surface

The linear stationary problem of convection in a medium rotating about a vertical axis above a thermally inhomogeneous horizontal surface is theoretically investigated. Attention is mainly focused on the case of a homogeneous medium, but certain stratification effects and especially the convection characteristics in binary mixtures (for example, in saline sea water) are also considered. When the rotation is rapid (large Taylor numbers) the convective cells are strongly elongated in the vertical direction, though they also contain a thin Ekman boundary layer. The importance of the boundary conditions on the horizontal surface (in parallel with the no-slip conditions, more general conditions that may follow from the quadratic turbulent friction model are considered) is shown. In the case of binary mixtures, the differential diffusion and rotation effects may together result in the appearance of “induced salt fingers”, the deep penetration of convection into an arbitrarily stably stratified medium. The convective motions may then have a considerable effect on the background vertical temperature and admixture distributions. Attention is drawn to an original manifestation of the analogy between the rotation and stratification effects: in a non-rotating, stably stratified medium, near a thermally inhomogeneous vertical surface, the convection also penetrates deep into the medium, but in the horizontal direction, so that, when the coordinate system is rotated through 90°, the solution coincides with the case of a rotating non-stratified fluid considered here.     

Axisymmetric convective boundary layer in a vibrating fluid

A vibrating convective flow around a uniformly heated sphere in weightlessness conditions is studied theoretically for circularly polarized vibrations. It is found that the fluid motion has the form of two jets spreading from the sphere in opposite directions along the symmetry axis, perpendicular to the vibration polarization plane. For large characteristic temperature gradients, the flow becomes self-similar. The equations describing thermovibrational convection in the boundary layer approximation are derived. A class of self-similar solutions for a point heat source is found. The results obtained on the basis of the full equations and in the boundary layer approximation are compared.     

Locally similar solutions for hydromagnetic and thermal slip flow boundary layers over a flat plate with variable fluid properties and convective surface boundary condition

This paper presents heat transfer process in a two-dimensional steady hydromagnetic convective flow of an electrically conducting fluid over a flat plate with partial slip at the surface of the boundary subjected to the convective surface heat flux at the boundary. The analysis accounts for both temperature-dependent viscosity and temperature dependent thermal conductivity. The local similarity equations are derived and solved numerically using the Nachtsheim-Swigert iteration procedure. Results for the dimensionless velocity, temperature and ambient Prandtl number within the boundary layer are displayed graphically delineating the effect of various parameters characterizing the flow. The results show that momentum boundary layer thickness significantly depends on the surface convection parameter, Hartmann number and on the sign of the variable viscosity parameter. The results also show that plate surface temperature is higher when there is no slip at the plate compared to its presence. For both slip and no-slip cases surface temperature of the plate can be controlled by controlling the strength of the applied magnetic field. In modelling the thermal boundary layer flow with variable viscosity and variable thermal conductivity, the Prandtl number must be treated as a variable irrespective of flow conditions whether there is slip or no-slip at the boundary to obtain realistic results.     

Stability of convective motion in a vertical layer in the presence of longitudinal vibrations

The influence of vibrations of a cavity containing a fluid on the convective stability of the equilibrium has been investigated on a number of occasions [1]. The stability of convective flows in a modulated gravity field has not hitherto been studied systematically. There is only the paper of Baxi, Arpaci, and Vest [2], which contains fragmentary data corresponding to various values of the determining parameters of the problem. The present paper investigates the linear stability of convective flow in a vertical plane layer with walls at different temperatures in the presence of longitudinal harmonic vibrations of the cavity containing the fluid. It is assumed that the frequency of the vibrations is fairly high; the motion is described by the equations of the averaged convective motion. The stability boundaries of the flow with respect to monotonic perturbations in the region of Prandtl numbers 0 ? P ? 10 are determined. It is found that high-frequency vibrations have a destabilizing influence on the convective motion. At sufficiently large values of the vibration parameter, the flow becomes unstable at arbitrarily small values of the Grashof number, this being due to the mechanism of vibrational convection, which leads to instability even under conditions of weightlessness, when the main flow is absent [3, 4].     

Convection in a low Prandtl number fluid layer rotating about a vertical axis

Two- and three-dimensional convection flows in a horizontal layer of a low Prandtl number fluid heated from below and rotating about a vertical axis are studied numerically with a Galerkin method. Solutions for subcritical steady finite amplitude convection and convection in the form of standing oscillations are obtained. Parameter regimes that appear to be attainable in laboratory experiments have been emphasized. The stability of subcritical two-dimensional steady convection has been investigated and three-dimensional chaotic states of convection have been found.