The effect of Prandtl number on turbulent sheared thermal convection

DOI10.1017/JFM.2020.1019zbMATH Open1461.76239arXiv2007.02825OpenAlexW3039332835MaRDI QIDQ5145497FDOQ5145497

Detlef Lohse, Pier Tabak, R. Verzicco, Richard J. A. M. Stevens, Alexander Blass

Publication date: 20 January 2021

Published in: Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In turbulent wall sheared thermal convection, there are three different flow regimes, depending on the relative relevance of thermal forcing and wall shear. In this paper we report the results of direct numerical simulations of such sheared Rayleigh-B'enard convection, at fixed Rayleigh number $Ra=10^6$, varying the wall Reynolds number in the range $0leqR{e}_{w}leq4000$ and Prandtl number $0.22leqPrleq4.6$, extending our prior work by Blass et al. (2020), where $Pr$ was kept constant at unity and the thermal forcing ($Ra$) varied. We cover a wide span of bulk Richardson numbers $0.014leqRileq100$ and show that the Prandtl number strongly influences the morphology and dynamics of the flow structures. In particular, at fixed $Ra$ and $R{e}_w$, a high Prandtl number causes stronger momentum transport from the walls and therefore yields a greater impact of the wall shear on the flow structures, resulting in an increased effect of $R{e}_w$ on the Nusselt number. Furthermore, we analyse the thermal and kinetic boundary layer thicknesses and relate their behaviour to the resulting flow regimes. For the largest shear rates and $Pr$ numbers, we observe the emergence of a Prandtl-von Karman log-layer, signalling the onset of turbulent dynamics in the boundary layer. Finally, our results allow to extend the Grossmann-Lohse theory for heat transport in Rayleigh-B'enard convection to the sheared case, universally describing $Nu(Ra,Pr,R{e}_w)$.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.02825

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zbMATH Keywords

atmospheric flowsturbulent convectionBénard convection

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Convective turbulence (76F35) Geophysical flows (76U60)

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Cited In (14)

• A high order finite difference solver for simulations of turbidity currents with high parallel efficiency
• Twin forces: similarity between rotation and stratification effects on wall turbulence
• Effects of heat release on turbulent shear flows. Part 2. Turbulent mixing layers and the equivalence principle
• Wall-sheared thermal convection: heat transfer enhancement and turbulence relaminarization
• Boundary layers in turbulent vertical convection at high Prandtl number
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• An investigation of the Prandtl number effect on turbulent heat transfer in channel flows by large eddy simulation
• Effect of radius ratio on the sheared annular centrifugal turbulent convection
• Shear-induced modulation on thermal convection over rough plates
• Turbulent mixed convection in vertical and horizontal channels
• Particle transport and deposition in wall-sheared thermal turbulence
• Effect of turbulent Prandtl number on the computation of film-cooling effectiveness
• Scaling relations for heat and momentum transport in sheared Rayleigh-Bénard convection
• Turbulent Prandtl number effect on passive scalar advection

Uses Software

• AFiD

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