The onset of convection in fluid layers heated rapidly in a time-dependent manner

Abstract

We treat the onset of convective motions for the case in which the base-state density profile is evolving in time. The formulation is in terms of random forcing which we take to be thermodynamic in origin, following our earlier work (see Jhaveri & Homsy 1980). Experimental evidence is reviewed which clearly demonstrates the need for such a stochastic formulation. The randomly forced initial-value problem is solved numerically at high Rayleigh numbers in the mean-field approximation for both a step change and linear temporal increase in surface temperature. The numerical results give both an expected value for the onset time for which convection is measurable and the variance of that expected value. The results are in good agreement with available experiments.