Abstract
A review of two experiments on free convection in room temperature gas under pressure is presented, for Rayleigh numbers ranging from 4×105 to 1×1011, at a constant Prandtl number of 0.7. Emphasis is given to the experimental properties of the heavy gas SF6 used to obtain these high Rayleigh numbers. A conventional Rayleigh-Bénard convection cell of aspect ratio 1 was used to study the interplay of the buoyant plumes and large scale circulation characteristic of hard turbulence. The same cell turned 90 degrees was used for a study of side-heated convection, in this case the turbulence is restricted to a narrow region near the hot and cold boundaries, and the bulk is stably stratified. Internal waves with a mean frequency corresponding to the Brunt-Vaisala frequency are observed in the bulk. These two experiments highlight the outstanding questions in turbulent convection, and predict new regimes which should be observed at higher Rayleigh number.
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Belmonte, A. (1998). Buoyant Plumes and Internal Waves: Two Experiments in Turbulent Convection. In: Donnelly, R.J., Sreenivasan, K.R. (eds) Flow at Ultra-High Reynolds and Rayleigh Numbers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2230-9_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2230-9_15
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