Physical mechanism of the convective heat flux increasing in case of mixed boundary conditions (2010.14909v1)

Abstract: A series of numerical simulations of Rayleigh-B{\'e}nard convection in a cubic cavity are conducted in order to examine the structure of the thermal boundary layer in case of mixed boundary conditions. The main goal of the study is the physical mechanism which provides increasing of heat flux with spatial frequency of conducting-adiabatic pattern. Different spatial configuration of conducting plates, including the fractal one, are considered for Rayleigh numbers from $\Ray=10^{7}$ to $\Ray=2.0\times 10^{9}$. We have shown that the temperature boundary layer in case of mixed boundary conditions at the bottom is strongly non-uniform. This non-homogeneity is a result of several factors such as conducting-adiabatic pattern, large-scale circulation and small-scale motions over conducting plates. The thickness of the thermal boundary layer strongly depends on the size of the conducting plates and can be substantially smaller than for a classical Rayleigh-B{\'e}nard convection. This effect increases the heat flux with decreasing the size of hot plates, which corresponds to the increasing of spatial frequency of conducting-adiabatic pattern.