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On the wall-bounded model of fingering double diffusive convection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2023

Junyi Li Open the ORCID record for Junyi Li [Opens in a new window]  and
Yantao Yang Open the ORCID record for Yantao Yang [Opens in a new window]
Junyi Li
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, and Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China Joint Laboratory of Marine Hydrodynamics and Ocean Engineering, Laoshan Laboratory, Shandong 266299, PR China
Yantao Yang*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, and Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China Joint Laboratory of Marine Hydrodynamics and Ocean Engineering, Laoshan Laboratory, Shandong 266299, PR China
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

The present work aims at clarifying the effects of a solid boundary on the salt fingers in the wall-bounded double diffusive convection turbulence driven by the salinity and temperature differences between the top and bottom plates. The fluid properties are the same as the seawater, and two-dimensional direct numerical simulations are conducted over a wide range of the thermal and salinity Rayleigh numbers which measure the strength of driving salinity difference and stabilising temperature difference. We find that the bulk density ratio $\varLambda _b$, defined by the mean temperature and salinity gradients at the bulk, controls the flow morphology. As $\varLambda _b$ exceeds unity, the bulk flow shifts from wide convection rolls to slender salt fingers. Two different regimes are further identified for the cases of salt-finger type. One is the confined salt-finger regime where the characteristic height of salt fingers is comparable to the bulk height and the influences of the solid boundary are noticeable. The other is the free salt-finger regime where the salt fingers are much shorter than the bulk height. In this latter regime, the transport properties versus $\varLambda _b$ are in quantitative agreement with those obtained in the fully periodic domain (e.g. Traxler et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 677, 2011, pp. 530–553). For a limited range of density ratio at the highest salinity Rayleigh number considered here, multiple states can be obtained from different initial conditions. The large-scale secondary instability and spontaneous formation of staircase from finger layers are not observed in the current study.

JFM classification

Convection: Double diffusive convection Turbulent Flows: Turbulent convection
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 973 , 25 October 2023 , A37
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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