Rayleigh-Bénard convection with an inclined upper boundary.
We report experiments on thermally driven convection of a high-Prandtl-number fluid with an inclined upper boundary. For an inclined angle greater than the critical value, we observed a few new convection patterns, in which laterally migrating convection cells and plumes appear simultaneously and a large-scale flow is induced from the inclined upper boundary. The plumes induced from the inclined upper boundary activate the temperature fluctuations, resulting in the formation of a large-scale horizontal heat transfer with a lateral scale larger than that of each convection cell. The critical angle for the onset of the lateral migration of the cells is determined by comparing the two length scales: the height difference in one convection cell imposed by the inclined upper boundary and the thickness of the viscous boundary layer.
Namiki
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Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. namiki@earth.s.kanazawa-u.ac.jp
Kurita
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