Spatial and thermal features of three-dimensional Rayleigh-Bénard convection (Q1324647)

A full three-dimensional study is reported on natural convection of air in six heated-from-below parallelepipedic enclosures. A supercritical Rayleigh number \((Ra=8\times 10^ 3)\), was used in order to track the evolution of convective structures as a function of the enclosure's aspect ratio \((A)\) only. The transition from one convective structure to another has the features of a flow bifurcation controlled by \(A\). The overall Nusselt number changed continuously when the aspect ratio was increased. At the lowest aspect ratios the change was significant, but further increments in \(A\) did not produce important variations in this parameter, in the range of aspect ratios studied.