The large-scale footprint in small-scale Rayleigh–Bénard turbulence
Open Access
- 3 February 2021
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Abstract
Turbulent convection systems are known to give rise to prominent large-scale circulation. At the same time, the ‘background’ (or ‘small-scale’) turbulence is also highly relevant and e.g. carries the majority of the heat transport in the bulk of the flow. Here, we investigate how the small-scale turbulence is interlinked with the large-scale flow organization of Rayleigh–Bénard convection. Our results are based on a numerical simulation at Rayleigh number (thermal boundary layer thickness). Local wavenumbers are generally found to be higher on the plume emitting side compared to the impacting one. A second independent approach by means of conditional averages confirmed these findings and yields additional insight into the large-scale variation of small-scale properties. Our results have implications for the modelling of small-scale turbulence.Keywords
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