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Instabilities of convection rolls in a high Prandtl number fluid

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2006

F. H. Busse  and
J. A. Whitehead
F. H. Busse
Affiliation:
Department of Planetary and Space Science, University of California, Los Angeles
J. A. Whitehead
Affiliation:
Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

An experiment on the stability of convection rolls with varying wave-number is described in extension of the earlier work by Chen & Whitehead (1968). The results agree with the theoretical predictions by Busse (1967a) and show two distinct types of instability in the form of non-oscillatory disturbances. The ‘zigzag instability’ corresponds to a bending of the original rolls; in the ‘cross-roll instability’ rolls emerge at right angles to the original rolls. At Rayleigh numbers above 23,000 rolls are unstable for all wave-numbers and are replaced by a three-dimensional form of stationary convection for which the name ‘bimodal convection’ is proposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , 31 May 1971 , pp. 305 - 320
Copyright
© 1971 Cambridge University Press

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