Effects of polymer additives in the bulk of turbulent thermal convection

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that small amounts of polymer additives can significantly enhance heat transport in turbulent thermal convection by suppressing incoherent fluctuations and increasing plume coherence, with a threshold concentration needed for effects.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that polymer additives improve heat transport by stabilizing boundary layers and increasing plume coherence in turbulent convection.

Findings

Polymer additives suppress small-scale turbulence.

Heat transport increases with polymer concentration above a threshold.

Polymer stabilizes thermal boundary layers.

Abstract

We present experimental evidence that a minute amount of polymer additives can significantly enhance heat transport in the bulk region of turbulent thermal convection. The effects of polymer additives are found to be the \textit{suppression} of turbulent background fluctuations that give rise to incoherent heat fluxes that make no net contribution to heat transport, and at the same time to \textit{increase} the coherency of temperature and velocity fields. The suppression of small-scale turbulent fluctuations leads to more coherent thermal plumes that result in the heat transport enhancement. The fact that polymer additives can increase the coherency of thermal plumes is supported by the measurements of a number of local quantities, such as the extracted plume amplitude and width, the velocity autocorrelation functions and the velocity-temperature cross-correlation coefficient. The results from local measurements also suggest the existence of a threshold value for the polymer concentration, only above which can significant modification of the plume coherent properties and enhancement of the local heat flux be observed. Estimation of the plume emission rate suggests that the second effect of polymer additives is to stabilize the thermal boundary layers.