| Abstract: | 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. |
