Stratification and segregation under laminar convection

TL;DR

This paper investigates how laminar convection causes stratification and segregation in horizontal fluid layers, analyzing various convection modes and their impact on flow structure and transfer characteristics, including effects in weightlessness.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the formation of layered structures and stratification in laminar convection, including metastable instability in weightlessness with capillary effects.

Findings

Layered structures depend on dimensionless parameters.

Metastable stratification vector instability occurs in weightlessness.

Flow features significantly alter heat and mass transfer characteristics.

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of the formation of stratification in an incompressible fluid due to convective laminar flows in horizontal layers heated from the side. Medium and intensive modes of stationary laminar thermal, concentrational and thermo-concentrational (in particular thermohaline) convection are considered, in which nonlinear flow features are manifested, which can radically change the flow structure and the characteristics of heat and mass transfer. The solutions of the problems of laminar problems of convection show the features of the formation of layered structures, vertical temperature and concentration stratification depending on the determining dimensionless parameters. The metastable instability of the direction of the stratification vector (the location of the free surface) in weightlessness in the presence of capillary convection was shown.