No Arabic abstract
This numerical study presents a simple but extremely effective way to considerably enhance heat transport in turbulent multiphase flows, namely by using oleophilic walls. As a model system, we pick the Rayleigh-Benard setup, filled with an oil-water mixture. For oleophilic walls, e.g. using only $10%$ volume fraction of oil in water, we observe a remarkable heat transport enhancement of more than $100%$ as compared to the pure water case. In contrast, for oleophobic walls, the enhancement is then only about $20%$ as compared to pure water. The physical explanation of the highly-efficient heat transport for oleophilic walls is that thermal plumes detach from the oil-rich boundary layer and are transported together with the oil phase. In the bulk, the oil-water interface prevents the plumes to mix with the turbulent water bulk. To confirm this physical picture, we show that the minimum amount of oil to achieve the maximum heat transport is set by the volume fraction of the thermal plumes. Our findings provide guidelines of how to optimize heat transport in thermal turbulence. Moreover, the physical insight of how coherent structures are coupled with one phase of a two-phase system has very general applicability for controlling transport properties in other turbulent multiphase flows.
We analyze the reversals of the large scale flow in Rayleigh-Benard convection both through particle image velocimetry flow visualization and direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the underlying Boussinesq equations in a (quasi) two-dimensional, rectangular geometry of aspect ratio 1. For medium Prandtl number there is a diagonal large scale convection roll and two smaller secondary rolls in the two remaining corners diagonally opposing each other. These corner flow rolls play a crucial role for the large scale wind reversal: They grow in kinetic energy and thus also in size thanks to plume detachments from the boundary layers up to the time that they take over the main, large scale diagonal flow, thus leading to reversal. Based on this mechanism we identify a typical time scale for the reversals. We map out the Rayleigh number vs Prandtl number phase space and find that the occurrence of reversals very sensitively depends on these parameters.
It is commonly accepted that the breakup criteria of drops or bubbles in turbulence is governed by surface tension and inertia. However, also {it{buoyancy}} can play an important role at breakup. In order to better understand this role, here we numerically study Rayleigh-Benard convection for two immiscible fluid layers, in order to identify the effects of buoyancy on interface breakup. We explore the parameter space spanned by the Weber number $5leq We leq 5000$ (the ratio of inertia to surface tension) and the density ratio between the two fluids $0.001 leq Lambda leq 1$, at fixed Rayleigh number $Ra=10^8$ and Prandtl number $Pr=1$. At low $We$, the interface undulates due to plumes. When $We$ is larger than a critical value, the interface eventually breaks up. Depending on $Lambda$, two breakup types are observed: The first type occurs at small $Lambda ll 1$ (e.g. air-water systems) when local filament thicknesses exceed the Hinze length scale. The second, strikingly different, type occurs at large $Lambda$ with roughly $0.5 < Lambda le 1$ (e.g. oil-water systems): The layers undergo a periodic overturning caused by buoyancy overwhelming surface tension. For both types the breakup criteria can be derived from force balance arguments and show good agreement with the numerical results.
Thermal plumes are the energy containing eddy motions that carry heat and momentum in a convective boundary layer. The detailed understanding of their structure is of fundamental interest for a range of applications, from wall-bounded engineering flows to quantifying surface-atmosphere flux exchanges. We address the aspect of Reynolds stress anisotropy associated with the intermittent nature of heat transport in thermal plumes by performing an invariant analysis of the Reynolds stress tensor in an unstable atmospheric surface layer flow, using a field-experimental dataset. Given the intermittent and asymmetric nature of the turbulent heat flux, we formulate this problem in an event-based framework. In this approach, we provide structural descriptions of warm-updraft and cold-downdraft events and investigate the degree of isotropy of the Reynolds stress tensor within these events of different sizes. We discover that only a subset of these events are associated with the least anisotropic turbulence in highly-convective conditions. Additionally, intermittent large heat flux events are found to contribute substantially to turbulence anisotropy under unstable stratification. Moreover, we find that the sizes related to the maximum value of the degree of isotropy do not correspond to the peak positions of the heat flux distributions. This is because, the vertical velocity fluctuations pertaining to the sizes associated with the maximum heat flux, transport significant amount of streamwise momentum. A preliminary investigation shows that the sizes of the least anisotropic events probably scale with a mixed-length scale ($z^{0.5}lambda^{0.5}$, where $z$ is the measurement height and $lambda$ is the large-eddy length scale).
Vertical convection is investigated using direct numerical simulations over a wide range of Rayleigh numbers $10^7le Rale10^{14}$ with fixed Prandtl number $Pr=10$, in a two-dimensional convection cell with unit aspect ratio. It is found that the dependence of the mean vertical centre temperature gradient $S$ on $Ra$ shows three different regimes: In regime I ($Ra lesssim 5times10^{10}$), $S$ is almost independent of $Ra$; In the newly identified regime II ($5times10^{10} lesssim Ra lesssim 10^{13}$), $S$ first increases with increasing $Ra$ (regime ${rm{II}}_a$), reaches its maximum and then decreases again (regime ${rm{II}}_b$); In regime III ($Ragtrsim10^{13}$), $S$ again becomes only weakly dependent on $Ra$, being slightly smaller than in regime I. The transitions between diffeereent regimes are discussd. In the three different regimes, significantly different flow organizations are identified: In regime I and regime ${rm{II}}_a$, the location of the maximal horizontal velocity is close to the top and bottom walls; However, in regime ${rm{II}}_b$ and regime III, banded zonal flow structures develop and the maximal horizontal velocity now is in the bulk region. The different flow organizations in the three regimes are also reflected in the scaling exponents in the effective power law scalings $Nusim Ra^beta$ and $Resim Ra^gamma$. In regime I, the fitted scaling exponents ($betaapprox0.26$ and $gammaapprox0.51$) are in excellent agreement with the theoretical predication of $beta=1/4$ and $gamma=1/2$ for laminar VC (Shishkina, {it{Phys. Rev. E.}} 2016, 93, 051102). However, in regimes II and III, $beta$ increases to a value close to 1/3 and $gamma$ decreases to a value close to 4/9. The stronger $Ra$ dependence of $Nu$ is related to the ejection of plumes and larger local heat flux at the walls.
Steady flows that optimize heat transport are obtained for two-dimensional Rayleigh-Benard convection with no-slip horizontal walls for a variety of Prandtl numbers $Pr$ and Rayleigh number up to $Rasim 10^9$. Power law scalings of $Nusim Ra^{gamma}$ are observed with $gammaapprox 0.31$, where the Nusselt number $Nu$ is a non-dimensional measure of the vertical heat transport. Any dependence of the scaling exponent on $Pr$ is found to be extremely weak. On the other hand, the presence of two local maxima of $Nu$ with different horizontal wavenumbers at the same $Ra$ leads to the emergence of two different flow structures as candidates for optimizing the heat transport. For $Pr lesssim 7$, optimal transport is achieved at the smaller maximal wavenumber. In these fluids, the optimal structure is a plume of warm rising fluid which spawns left/right horizontal arms near the top of the channel, leading to downdrafts adjacent to the central updraft. For $Pr > 7$ at high-enough Ra, the optimal structure is a single updraft absent significant horizontal structure, and characterized by the larger maximal wavenumber.