Publications associated with Climate Physics
Thermal convection over fractal surfaces
Journal of Fluid Mechanics Cambridge University Press 907 (2020) A12
We use well resolved numerical simulations with the Lattice Boltzmann Method to study Rayleigh-B´enard convection in cells with a fractal boundary in two dimensions for P r = 1 and Ra ∈ [10^7 , 10^10]. The fractal boundaries are functions characterized by power spectral densities S(k) that decay with wavenumber, k, as S(k) ∼ k^p (p < 0). The degree of roughness is quantified by the exponent p with p < −3 for smooth (differentiable) surfaces and −3 ≤ p < −1 for rough surfaces with Hausdorff dimension D_f =1/2 (p + 5). By computing the exponent β in power law fits Nu ∼ Ra^β, where Nu and Ra are the Nusselt and the Rayleigh numbers for Ra ∈ [10^8, 10^10], we observe that heat transport scaling increases with roughness over the top two decades of Ra ∈ [10^8, 10^10]. For p = −3.0, −2.0 and −1.5 we find β = 0.288 ± 0.005, 0.329 ± 0.006 and 0.352 ± 0.011, respectively. We also observe that the Reynolds number, Re, scales as Re ∼ Ra^ξ , where ξ ≈ 0.57 over Ra ∈ [10^7, 10^10], for all p used in the study. For a given value of p, the averaged Nu and Re are insensitive to the specific realization of the roughness.
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