Heat and momentum transport in sheared Rayleigh-Benard convection

Abstract

This is a report on laboratory measurements of heat and momentum flux in sheared Rayleigh-Benard convection. A cylindrical annulus of water uniformly heated below and cooled above was subjected to an imposed shear by driving the bottom boundary so that it rotated steadily around the vertical axis of symmetry. The top boundary was stationary and formed part of a torsion balance. It was suspended from the laboratory ceiling by a long torsion wire. The torque exerted upon the top boundary by the fluid was measured by the twist of the torsion wire. From this angle of twist, the vertical flux of horizontal momentum was determined. The heat flux as well as the momentum flux were measured at each fixed value of Rayleigh number Ra and Reynolds number Re. The measurements were made in the range 6 × 10 6 ≤ Ra ≤ 6 × 10 7 and 38 ≤ Re ≤ 352. One of the most striling results is that at Ra near 3 × 10 7 to 5 × 10 7 depending upon Re, the dimensionless momentum flux Mo ceases its increasing trend and begins to decrease with increasing Ra. This may be described by saying that the effective viscosity decreases with further increasing of Ra. However, Mo always remained greater than unity in the range investigated.