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Effect of departures from the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation on the heat transport of horizontal convecting fluid layers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2006

Guenter Ahlers
Affiliation:
Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974

Abstract

Measurements are presented of the Nusselt numbers N and Rayleigh numbers R for shallow layers of 4He gas heated from below. By choosing different temperatures between 2·3 K and 5·1 K and different pressures between 0·07 bar and 1 bar, the extent Q of departures from the Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation was varied. When R was evaluated at the static temperature at the midplane of the cell, both the critical Rayleigh number Rc and the initial slope N1 of the Nusselt number were found to be independent of Q within experimental scatter. This result agrees with the prediction of Busse (1967). When R was evaluated at the cold end temperature of the cell, both Rc and N1 depended strongly upon Q.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1980 Cambridge University Press

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