Competing and coexisting dynamical states of travelling-wave convection in an annulus

We describe experiments on convection in binary fluid mixtures in a large-aspect-ratio annular container. In this geometry, the convective rolls align radially and travel azimuthally, providing a model of travelling waves in an extended one-dimensional nonlinear dynamical system. Several different stable non-equilibrium states can be produced in this experiment, and the competition between them leads to a wide variety of steady and time-dependent behaviour. The observed spatiotemporal behaviour may shed light on recent theories of the nature of stable nonlinear travelling-wave convection, the pinning of travelling waves, and the creation of spatiotemporal defects.

Source–sink flows in a rotating annulus: a combined laboratory and numerical study

A general characteristic of rapidly rotating fluids is that accurate experimental measurements can only be made of the main (azimuthal) flow. The secondary flow is then usually deduced from theory, although this is often incomplete in the boundary regions where the secondary flow is of most interest.In this paper we consider the case of source-sink flow between the porous walls of a rapidly rotating annular container and numerically integrate the full equations of motion in order to determine the complete structure of the secondary flow. The results are compared with the (approximate) analytic studies of Hide (1968) and Bennetts & Hocking (1973) to show the differences between the two approaches.A defect of many previous numerical papers has been the inability to check the solution in the nonlinear case. To overcome this, new experimental measurements of the azimuthal velocity profile for a Rossby number of 0·238 have been obtained and these are compared with the numerical results.

The axisymmetric convective regime for a rigidly bounded rotating annulus

The axisymmetric flow of liquid in a rigidly bounded annular container of heightH, rotating with angular velocity Ω and subjected to a temperature difference ΔTbetween its vertical cylindrical perfectly conducting side walls, whose distance apart isL, is analysed in the boundary-layer approximation for small Ekman numberv/2ΩL2, withgαΔTHv/4Ω2L2K∼ 1. The heat transfer across the annulus is then convection-dominated, as is characteristic of the experimentally observed ‘upper symmetric regime’. The Prandtl numberv/kis assumed large, andHis restricted to be less than about 2L. The side wall boundary-layer equations are the same as in (non-rotating) convection in a rectangular cavity. The horizontal boundary layers are Ekman layers and the four boundary layers, together with certain spatialaveragesin the interior, are determined independently of the interior flow details. The determination of the latter comprises a ‘secondary’ problem in which viscosity and heat conduction are important throughout the interior; the meridional streamlines are not necessarily parallel to the isotherms. The secondary problem is discussed qualitatively but not solved. The theory agrees fairly well with an available numerical experiment in the upper symmetric regime, forv/k[bumpe ] 7, after finite-Ekmannumber effects such as finite boundary-layer thickness are allowed for heuris-tically.