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Heat transfer by rapidly rotating Rayleigh–Bénard convection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2012

E. M. King ,
S. Stellmach  and
J. M. Aurnou
E. M. King*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4767, USA
S. Stellmach
Affiliation:
Institut für Geophysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Arbeitsgruppe Geodynamik, Corrensstraße 24, 48149 Münster, Germany
J. M. Aurnou
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1567, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: ericmking@gmail.com
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Abstract

Turbulent, rapidly rotating convection has been of interest for decades, yet there exists no generally accepted scaling law for heat transfer behaviour in this system. Here, we develop an exact scaling law for heat transfer by geostrophic convection, , by considering the stability of the thermal boundary layers, where , and are the Nusselt, Rayleigh and Ekman numbers, respectively, and is the critical Rayleigh number for the onset of convection. Furthermore, we use the scaling behaviour of the thermal and Ekman boundary layer thicknesses to quantify the necessary conditions for geostrophic convection: . Interestingly, the predictions of both heat flux and regime transition do not depend on the total height of the fluid layer. We test these scaling arguments with data from laboratory and numerical experiments. Adequate agreement is found between theory and experiment, although there is a paucity of convection data for low .

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Geostrophic turbulence Geophysical and Geological Flows: Rotating flows
Type
Papers
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 691 , 25 January 2012 , pp. 568 - 582
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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