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Sea water freezing modes in a natural convection system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2023

Yihong Du Open the ORCID record for Yihong Du [Opens in a new window] ,
Ziqi Wang ,
Linfeng Jiang ,
Enrico Calzavarini Open the ORCID record for Enrico Calzavarini [Opens in a new window]  and
Chao Sun Open the ORCID record for Chao Sun [Opens in a new window]
Yihong Du
Affiliation:
Center for Combustion Energy, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of MoE, International Joint Laboratory on Low Carbon Clean Energy Innovation, and Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, PR China
Ziqi Wang
Affiliation:
Center for Combustion Energy, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of MoE, International Joint Laboratory on Low Carbon Clean Energy Innovation, and Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, PR China
Linfeng Jiang
Affiliation:
Center for Combustion Energy, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of MoE, International Joint Laboratory on Low Carbon Clean Energy Innovation, and Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, PR China
Enrico Calzavarini*
Affiliation:
Univ. Lille, Unité de Mécanique de Lille – J. Boussinesq (UML) ULR 7512, F-59000 Lille, France
Chao Sun*
Affiliation:
Center for Combustion Energy, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of MoE, International Joint Laboratory on Low Carbon Clean Energy Innovation, and Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, PR China Department of Engineering Mechanics, School of Aerospace Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China
*
†Email addresses for correspondence: enrico.calzavarini@univ-lille.fr, chaosun@tsinghua.edu.cn
†Email addresses for correspondence: enrico.calzavarini@univ-lille.fr, chaosun@tsinghua.edu.cn
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Abstract

Sea ice is crucial in many natural processes and human activities. Understanding the dynamical couplings between the inception, growth and equilibrium of sea ice and the rich fluid mechanical processes occurring at its interface and interior is of relevance in many domains, ranging from geophysics to marine engineering. Here we investigate experimentally the complete freezing process of water with dissolved salt in a standard natural convection system, i.e. the prototypical Rayleigh–Bénard cell. Due to the presence of a mushy phase, the studied system is considerably more complex than the freezing of fresh water in the same conditions (Wang et al., Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, vol. 118, issue 10, 2021, e2012870118). We measure the ice thickness and porosity at the dynamical equilibrium state for different initial salinities of the solution and temperature gaps across the cell. These observables are non-trivially related to the controlling parameters of the system as they depend on the heat transport mode across the cell. We identify in the experiments five out of the six possible modes of heat transport. We highlight the occurrence of brine convection through the mushy ice and of penetrative convection in stably stratified liquid underlying the ice. A one-dimensional multi-layer heat flux model built on the known scaling relations of global heat transport in natural convection systems in liquids and porous media is proposed. Given the measured porosity of the ice, it allows us to predict the corresponding ice thickness, in a unified framework.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Sea ice Convection: Buoyancy-driven instability

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JFM Papers
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Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 960 , 10 April 2023 , A35
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© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

‡

Equally contributed authors.

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