Heat transport measurements in turbulent rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates how rotation influences heat transport in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection, revealing scaling behaviors and the impact of rotation across a broad range of Rayleigh and Taylor numbers.

Contribution

The paper provides new experimental data on heat transport in rotating turbulent convection, analyzing scaling laws and the effects of rotation on heat transfer.

Findings

Heat transport scales roughly as 0.29 with a Ro-dependent coefficient.

Heat transport can be fitted by a combination of power laws of Ra^{1/5} and Ra^{1/3}.

Rotation significantly impacts heat transfer in turbulent convection.

Abstract

We present experimental heat transport measurements of turbulent Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection with rotation about a vertical axis. The fluid, water with Prandtl number ($\sigma$) about 6, was confined in a cell which had a square cross section of 7.3 cm$\times$7.3 cm and a height of 9.4 cm. Heat transport was measured for Rayleigh numbers $2\times 10^5 <$ Ra $ < 5\times 10^8$ and Taylor numbers $0 <$ Ta $< 5\times 10^{9}$. We show the variation of normalized heat transport, the Nusselt number, at fixed dimensional rotation rate $\Omega_D$, at fixed Ra varying Ta, at fixed Ta varying Ra, and at fixed Rossby number Ro. The scaling of heat transport in the range $10^7$ to about $10^9$ is roughly 0.29 with a Ro dependent coefficient or equivalently is also well fit by a combination of power laws of the form $a Ra^{1/5} + b Ra^{1/3}$. The range of Ra is not sufficient to differentiate single power law or combined power law scaling. The overall impact of rotation on heat transport in turbulent convection is assessed.