Thermal convection in a viscoelastic liquid (Q579058)

The viscoelastic fluid considered has a hybrid constitutive relation involving three parameters besides the coefficient of viscosity and the relaxation time. The paper gives a theoretical study of the classical Bénard problem on stability and convection for a horizontal layer of fluid heated from below and it is seen that the nature of the onset of convection depends distinctly on the elasticity parameter as well as the type of the constitutive relation. The convective solution can be steady or periodic and in either case the solution can emerge either supercritically or subcritically. In the steady case the solution is necessarily supercritical and stable when the parameter \b{a} is close to unity while subcritical solution is possible when \b{a} is close to zero and the elasticity parameter is large. In the case of periodic convection even though the results cannot be precisely expressed through simple inequalities, it can be qualitatively stated that only models with the parameter \b{a} close to unity lead to subcritical bifurcation. A Fourier representation of the solution to the nonlinear problem is developed and it admits of aperiodic or chaotic solutions in a specific truncation generalizing the classical Lorenz system for the Newtonian Bénard problem.