Elliptical Instability and Multi-Roll Flow Modes of the Large-scale Circulation in Confined Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard Convection

Abstract

Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in slender cylindrical cells exhibits rich dynamics of the large-scale circulation (LSC), with several rolls stacked on top of each other. We propose that the elliptical instability is the mechanism which causes the twisting and breaking of the LSC into multiple rolls and that the volume-averaged heat and momentum transport, represented by the Nusselt number and Reynolds number, is generally weaker for larger number $n$ of the LSC rolls. This is supported by direct numerical simulations for $Ra=5\times 10^5$, $Pr=0.1$, $H=5D$ and $1\le n\le 4$.

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• Similarities between characteristics of convective turbulence in confined and extended domains
• Oscillatory large-scale circulation in liquid-metal thermal convection and its structural unit
• Turbulent mesoscale convection in the Boussinesq limit and beyond
• Turbulent convection in rotating slender cells
• Collective variables between large-scale states in turbulent convection
• Taylor rolls on tour: Slow drift of turbulent large-scale structures in flows with continuous symmetries