| Abstract: | 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. |
