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Stabilizing/destabilizing the large-scale circulation in turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection with sidewall temperature control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2021

Shengqi Zhang Open the ORCID record for Shengqi Zhang [Opens in a new window] ,
Xin Chen Open the ORCID record for Xin Chen [Opens in a new window] ,
Zhenhua Xia Open the ORCID record for Zhenhua Xia [Opens in a new window] ,
Heng-Dong Xi Open the ORCID record for Heng-Dong Xi [Opens in a new window] ,
Quan Zhou Open the ORCID record for Quan Zhou [Opens in a new window]  and
Shiyi Chen Open the ORCID record for Shiyi Chen [Opens in a new window]
Shengqi Zhang
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China
Xin Chen
Affiliation:
Institute of Extreme Mechanics and School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, PR China
Zhenhua Xia*
Affiliation:
Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, PR China
Heng-Dong Xi
Affiliation:
Institute of Extreme Mechanics and School of Aeronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, PR China
Quan Zhou
Affiliation:
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Mechanics in Energy Engineering, Shanghai Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, School of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200072, PR China
Shiyi Chen*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Turbulence and Complex Systems, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, PR China
*
†Email addresses for correspondence: xiazh@zju.edu.cn, chensy@sustech.edu.cn
†Email addresses for correspondence: xiazh@zju.edu.cn, chensy@sustech.edu.cn
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Abstract

In this paper, we designed two different configurations with locally isothermal sidewalls, where the temperature is set to be the bulk temperature, to control the large-scale circulation in turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection, namely two-point control and four-point control. At fixed Rayleigh number $Ra=10^8$ and Prandtl number $Pr=2$, a series of direct numerical simulations are performed on both two-dimensional (2-D) and quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2-D) cavities with both types of control, where the width of the control area is fixed at $\delta _c=0.05$ and the vertical distance from the cavity centre $h_c$ varies from 0 to 0.45 with an interval of 0.05. Our results show that the control effect depends on $h_c$, the control configurations as well as the flow dimensions. For 2-D cavities, both two-point control and four-point control suppress the flow reversal when $h_c \geq 0.05$, accompanied by the enhancement of vertical heat transfer and the strength of the large-scale circulation. For quasi-2-D cavities, the suppression of the flow reversals is obvious with two-point control and $h_c\geq 0.05$, while the effect is rather limited with four-point control. Further experiments with $Pr=5.7$ and $Ra$ up to $7.36\times10^8$ show that two-point control with $h_c=0.15$ can effectively suppress the flow reversal, while two-point control with $h_c=0$ can suppress the reversals at low $Ra=1.93\times 10^8$ and activate them at higher $Ra=7.36\times 10^8$, which agrees well with our numerical simulations.

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Type
JFM Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 915 , 25 May 2021 , A14
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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