Transient and steady convection in two dimensions

Abstract

We simulate thermal convection in a two-dimensional square box using the no-slip condition on all boundaries, and isothermal bottom and top walls and adiabatic sidewalls. We choose 0.1 and 1 for the Prandtl number $Pr$ and vary the Rayleigh number $Ra$ between $10^6$ and $10^{12}$. We particularly study the temporal evolution of integral transport quantities towards their steady states. Perhaps not surprisingly, the velocity field evolves more slowly than the thermal field, and its steady state -- which is nominal in the sense that large-amplitude low-frequency oscillations persist around plausible averages -- is reached exponentially. We study these oscillation characteristics. The transient time for the velocity field to achieve its nominal steady state increases almost linearly with the Reynolds number. For large $Ra$, the Reynolds number itself scales almost as $R{a}^{2/3}P{r}^{-1}$, and the Nusselt number as $R{a}^{2/7}$.

To appear in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics