70th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (November 19, 2017 — November 21, 2017)

V0060: The Many Scales of Rayleigh-Beynard Convection

Authors
  • Jeffrey Oishi, Bates College
  • Ben Brown, University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Keaton Burns, MIT
  • Susan Clark, Institute for Advanced Study
  • Geoff Vasil, University of Sydney
  • Daniel Lecoanet, Princeton University
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2017.GFM.V0060

Convection, the transport of heat by fluid motion, is extremely important in astrophysical, geophysical, and engineering fluid dynamics. The dynamics of rising hot fluid and sinking cool fluid is complex and quite beautiful. Using the flexible, open-source PDE solver Dedalus, we study the wide range of scales present in Rayleigh-Benard convection by attempting to solve all scales, from the injection of energy by the temperature difference between plates bounding the fluid from above and below all the way to the tiny scales where the internal friction of the fluid dissipates energy. 

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