Numerical simulation of turbulent Rayleigh–Benard convection

Abstract

This paper presents the numerical results of the turbulent Rayleigh–Benard convection at three Rayleigh numbers: Ra = 3.80 × 10 7, 3.08 × 10 8 and 1.58 × 10 9. The fourth order upwind scheme and coarse staggered grid system are used for the numerical calculation. The results are well agreed with experimental data. The successful computation for the problem implies that there might have simpler fundamentals for turbulent convection modeling, which will be explored in the subsequent theoretical and numerical studies.