effects of modulation on rayleigh-benard convection. part i调制对瑞利对流的影响。.pdfVIP

IJMMS 2004:19, 991–1001 PII. S0161171204211541 © Hindawi Publishing Corp. EFFECTS OF MODULATION ON RAYLEIGH-BENARD CONVECTION. PART I B. S. BHADAURIA and LOKENATH DEBNATH Received 10 November 2002 and in revised form 9 February 2003 The linear stability of a horizontal layer of fluid heated from below and above is consid- ered. In addition to a steady temperature difference between the walls of the fluid layer, a time-dependent periodic perturbation is applied to the wall temperatures. Only infinitesimal disturbances are considered. Numerical results for the critical Rayleigh number are obtained at various Prandtl numbers and for various values of the frequency. Some comparisons have been made with the known results. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 76E15, 76E06, 76R10. 1. Introduction. This paper deals with the stability of a fluid layer confined between two horizontal planes and heated from below and above periodically with time. Con- siderable attention has been given to this problem during the last thirty years. Chan- drasekhar [6] has given a comprehensive review of this stability problem with steady heating. Since the problem of Taylor stability and Benard stability are very similar, Venezian [18] investigated the thermal analogue of Donnelly’s experiment [7], using free-free sur- faces, and compared his results with the results of Donnelly. Venezian’s theory does not find any such finite frequency, as obtained by Donnelly, but finds that for the case of modulation only at the lower surface, the modulation would be stabilizing with maxi- mum stabilization occurring as the frequency goes to zero. However, in his explanation, it was suggested by Venezian that linear stability theory ceases to be applicable when the frequency of modulation is sufficiently small. Rosenblat and Herbert [ 15