Aspect Ratio Dependence of Heat Transfer in a Cylindrical Rayleigh-Bénard Cell

Ahlers, G.; Bodenschatz, E.; Hartmann, R.; He, X.; Lohse, D.; Reiter, P.; Stevens, R.J.A.M.; Verzicco, R.; Wedi, M.; Weiss, S.; Zhang, X.; Zwirner, L.; Shishkina, O.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.084501

Publication 90 · Thermal convection

Aspect Ratio Dependence of Heat Transfer in a Cylindrical Rayleigh-Bénard Cell

G. Ahlers, E. Bodenschatz, R. Hartmann, X. He, D. Lohse, P. Reiter, R.J.A.M. Stevens, R. Verzicco, M. Wedi, S. Weiss, X. Zhang, L. Zwirner, and O. Shishkina, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 084501 (2022).

Main finding

A finite-cell effective length collapses much of the displayed aspect-ratio dependence of the heat transfer, but the proposed ultimate-regime shift remains a prediction tested at only three aspect ratios.

Compensated heat transport against Rayleigh number before and after rescaling for cell width — **How to read the figure.** (a) Compensated Nusselt number against Rayleigh number for many aspect ratios, gathered from experiments and simulations. (b) The same data against a Rayleigh number rescaled by an effective cell length: much of the aspect-ratio spread collapses onto a single trend. Open the full-resolution figure. Figure 2. G. Ahlers et al. (2022). No separate licence is stated here; consult the original publication and credited source before reuse.

Why this matters

The rescaling offers a compact way to compare narrow and wide convection cells while making the finite-size assumption explicit.

Research context

Narrow cells need stronger forcing.

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