Rayleigh-Bénard convection: local scaling exponent in confined thermal convection

etc15 Tracking Number 49

Local heat flux measurements at the heating plate of a cubic Rayleigh-Bénard cell show that the scaling exponent a in the Nu~Ra^a scaling law depends on the position at the plate surface. Using infrared thermography, the two-dimensional local wall heat flux is studied with a high spatial resolution. The results have been obtained in a small aspect ratio cell with Gamma_x=1, Gamma_y=0.26 and clearly show an effect of the sidewalls on the local and therefore also on the global scaling of the heat transport.