• Letter

Heat-transport scaling and transition in geostrophic rotating convection with varying aspect ratio

Hao-Yuan Lu (陆浩源), Guang-Yu Ding (丁广裕), Jun-Qiang Shi (石俊强), Ke-Qing Xia (夏克青), and Jin-Qiang Zhong (钟锦强)
Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, L071501 – Published 28 July 2021
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Abstract

We present high-precision experimental and numerical studies of the Nusselt number Nu as functions of the Rayleigh number Ra in geostrophic rotating convection with the domain aspect ratio Γ varying from 0.4 to 3.8 and the Ekman number Ek varying from 2.7×105 to 2.0×107. With decreasing Ra our heat-transport data Nu(Ra) reveal a gradual transition from buoyancy-dominated to geostrophic convection at large Ek, whereas the transition becomes sharp with decreasing Ek. We determine the power-law scaling of NuRaγ, and find an unexpectedly strong Γ dependence of the scaling exponent γ. We further show that the boundary flows formed near the lateral wall give rise to pronounced enhancement of Nu over a broad range of the geostrophic regime, leading to reduction of γ in small-Γ cells. A very steep scaling with γ>3 is observed when the periodic lateral boundary condition is used, which manifests the significant differences between laterally confined and unconfined rotating thermal convection. The present work provides insight into the heat-transport scaling in geostrophic convection.

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  • Received 23 July 2020
  • Revised 31 December 2020
  • Accepted 12 July 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.6.L071501

©2021 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Fluid Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Hao-Yuan Lu (陆浩源)1, Guang-Yu Ding (丁广裕)2,3, Jun-Qiang Shi (石俊强)1, Ke-Qing Xia (夏克青)2,3,*, and Jin-Qiang Zhong (钟锦强)1,†

  • 1School of Physics Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
  • 2Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research and Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China
  • 3Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China

  • *xiakq@sustech.edu.cn
  • jinqiang@tongji.edu.cn

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Issue

Vol. 6, Iss. 7 — July 2021

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