Thermal convection at high aspect ratio: The local distribution and the dynamics of dissipative processes

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The majority of geophysical and engineering processes incorporating convective heat transfer is characterized by a large ratio between the lateral and the vertical extent of the fluid layer. However, experimental and numerical work on thermal convection still focuses on configurations, where this ratio is rather small (equal or smaller than one). In particular, this is due to the fact that experiments achieving comparable high Rayleigh numbers must be very high and quite often this large height cannot be compensated by a respective width. Thus, it is actually not possible to fully evaluate phenomenological theories that are usually based one a one-dimensional model without lateral confinement. The applicants wish to contribute to overcome this by measurements of the heat flux and the thermal dissipation rate in an experiment meeting both, high aspect ratio (eight or larger) as well as high Rayleigh number (up to 10{12}). Unlike in the preceding project, they will focus in the new work on the dynamics of these two quantities. It is known from direct numerical simulations (DNS) by Scheel and Schumacher [J. Schumacher and J. D. Scheel. Extreme dissipation event due to plume collision in a turbulent convection cell. Phys. Rev. E 94, 043104 (2016)] that, in particular, the thermal dissipation rate fluctuates very strongly as well locally as in time. Now, this will be validated in an experiment for the first time. Because, measurements potentially cover a much longer “observation period” than comparable DNS, the statistical uncertainty of the measurement data will be significantly smaller In a second part, the applicants will pursue the following question: How representative are local and time-averaged measurement data at a single point (in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection) for the entire respective horizontal plane. For aspect ratios smaller or equal to one, this problem is always studied in the past, and it is answered with “not representative”. For large aspect ratios, where the sidewall affects only a little outer fraction of the fluid layer, the applicants will answer this question by measurements of the thermal dissipation rate at various positions in multiple horizontal planes. These measurements will, thus, provide also the distribution of the local turbulent heat flux.