A comparative study on low‐order,amplitude‐equation and perturbation approaches in thermal convection

A comparison among three weakly nonlinear approaches for thermo‐gravitational instability in a Newtonian fluid layer heated from below is presented. First, the dynamical systems describing the time evolution of the problem from different weakly nonlinear approaches, namely, the Lorenz model, the amplitude equations and the perturbation expansion approaches are obtained. Next, the steady states and their stability, as well as the transient behaviour are obtained from each dynamical system. The similarity and difference among the three models are emphasized. The role of each of the nondimensional groups, the Rayleigh number and the Prandtl number is compared for the three models. The different approaches lead to similar behaviours when the Rayleigh number is just above its critical value and Prandtl number is high. However, only the dynamical system obtained from the amplitude equations is able to reflect the role of the Prandtl number. On the other hand, the amplitude equations and perturbation expansion techniques are not suitable for predicting the uniform oscillatory behaviour observed frequently in Rayleigh–Bénard convection. The novelty of the current work lies in studying the critical differences in the findings of the three popular approaches to investigate weakly nonlinear thermal convection for the first time. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.