IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v404y2000i6780d10.1038_35009036.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Turbulent convection at very high Rayleigh numbers

Author

Listed:
  • J. J. Niemela

    (University of Oregon)

  • L. Skrbek

    (University of Oregon)

  • K. R. Sreenivasan

    (University of Oregon
    Mason Laboratory, Yale University)

  • R. J. Donnelly

    (University of Oregon)

Abstract

Turbulent convection occurs when the Rayleigh number (Ra)—which quantifies the relative magnitude of thermal driving to dissipative forces in the fluid motion—becomes sufficiently high. Although many theoretical and experimental studies of turbulent convection exist, the basic properties of heat transport remain unclear. One important question concerns the existence of an asymptotic regime that is supposed to occur at very high Ra. Theory predicts that in such a state the Nusselt number (Nu), representing the global heat transport, should scale as Nu ∝ Raβ with β = 1/2. Here we investigate thermal transport over eleven orders of magnitude of the Rayleigh number (106 ≤ Ra ≤ 1017), using cryogenic helium gas as the working fluid. Our data, over the entire range of Ra, can be described to the lowest order by a single power-law with scaling exponent β close to 0.31. In particular, we find no evidence for a transition to the Ra1/2 regime. We also study the variation of internal temperature fluctuations with Ra, and probe velocity statistics indirectly.

Suggested Citation

  • J. J. Niemela & L. Skrbek & K. R. Sreenivasan & R. J. Donnelly, 2000. "Turbulent convection at very high Rayleigh numbers," Nature, Nature, vol. 404(6780), pages 837-840, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:404:y:2000:i:6780:d:10.1038_35009036
    DOI: 10.1038/35009036
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/35009036
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/35009036?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yadati, Yash & Mears, Nicholas & Chatterjee, Atanu, 2020. "Spatio-temporal characterization of thermal fluctuations in a non-turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection at steady state," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 547(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:404:y:2000:i:6780:d:10.1038_35009036. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.