Traveling waves in rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2004 May;69(5 Pt 2):056301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.056301. Epub 2004 May 12.

Abstract

A combined analytical, numerical, and experimental study of the traveling-wave wall mode in rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection is presented. No-slip top and bottom boundary conditions are used for the numerical computation of the linear stability, and the coefficients of the linear complex Ginzburg-Landau equation are then computed for various rotation rates. Numerical results for the no-slip boundary conditions are compared with free-slip calculations and with experimental data, and detailed comparison is made at a dimensionless rotation rate Omega=274. It is found that the inclusion of the more realistic no-slip boundary conditions for the top and bottom surfaces brings the numerical linear stability analysis into better agreement with the experimental data compared with results using free-slip top/bottom boundary conditions. Some remaining discrepancies may be accounted for by the finite conductivity of the sidewall boundaries.