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Exploring the plume and shear effects in turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection with effective horizontal buoyancy under streamwise and spanwise geometrical confinements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2022

Lu Zhang Open the ORCID record for Lu Zhang [Opens in a new window] ,
Jing Dong Open the ORCID record for Jing Dong [Opens in a new window]  and
Ke-Qing Xia Open the ORCID record for Ke-Qing Xia [Opens in a new window]
Lu Zhang
Affiliation:
Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China
Jing Dong
Affiliation:
Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China
Ke-Qing Xia*
Affiliation:
Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

We present an experimental and numerical study of turbulent thermal convection in the presence of an effective horizontal buoyancy that generates extra shear at the boundary. Geometrical confinements are also applied by varying the streamwise and spanwise aspect ratios of the convection cell to condense the plumes. With these, we systematically explore the effects of plume and shear on heat transfer. It is found that a streamwise confinement results in increased plume coverage but decreased shear compared with spanwise confinement. The fact that streamwise confinement leads to a higher vertical heat transfer efficiency than the spanwise confined case suggests that the increase of plume coverage is the dominant effect responsible for the enhanced heat transfer. Our results highlight the potential applications of coherent structure manipulation in efficient passive heat transfer control and thermal engineering. We also analyse the energetics of the present system and derive the expression of mixing efficiency accordingly. The mixing efficiency is found to increase with both the buoyancy ratio and streamwise dimension.

JFM classification

Convection: Plumes/thermals Turbulent Flows: Turbulence control
Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 940 , 10 June 2022 , A37
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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