Plume-scale confinement on thermal convection.

ABSTRACT: Despite the ubiquity of thermal convection in nature and artificial systems, we still lack a unified formulation that integrates the system's geometry, fluid properties, and thermal forcing to characterize the transition from free to confined convective regimes. The latter is broadly relevant to understanding how convection transports energy and drives mixing across a wide range of environments, such as planetary atmospheres/oceans and hydrothermal flows through fractures, as well as engineering heatsinks and microfluidics for the control of mass and heat fluxes. Performing laboratory experiments in Hele-Shaw geometries, we find multiple transitions that are identified as remarkable shifts in flow structures and heat transport scaling, underpinning previous numerical studies. To unveil the

SUBMITTER: Noto D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11252973 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature