Internally heated and fully compressible convection: flow morphology and scaling laws

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Powers, Whitney T., Anders, Evan H., Brown, Benjamin P.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2023
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author Powers, Whitney T.
Anders, Evan H.
Brown, Benjamin P.
author_facet Powers, Whitney T.
Anders, Evan H.
Brown, Benjamin P.
contents In stars and planets natural processes heat convective flows in the bulk of a convective region rather than at hard boundaries. By characterizing how convective dynamics are determined by the strength of an internal heating source we can gain insight into the processes driving astrophysical convection. Internally heated convection has been studied extensively in incompressible fluids, but the effects of stratification and compressibility have not been examined in detail. In this work, we study fully compressible convection driven by a spatially uniform heating source in 2D and 3D Cartesian, hydrodynamic simulations. We use a fixed temperature upper boundary condition which results in a system that is internally heated in the bulk and cooled at the top. We find that the flow speed, as measured by the Mach number, and turbulence, as measured by the Reynolds number, can be independently controlled by separately varying the characteristic temperature gradient from internal heating and the diffusivities. 2D simulations at a fixed Mach number (flow speed) demonstrate consistent power at low wavenumber as diffusivities are decreased. We observe convection where the velocity distribution is skewed towards cold, fast downflows, and that the flow speed is related to the length scale and entropy gradient of the upper boundary where the downflows are driven. We additionally find a heat transport scaling law which is consistent with prior incompressible work.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_15380
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Internally heated and fully compressible convection: flow morphology and scaling laws
Powers, Whitney T.
Anders, Evan H.
Brown, Benjamin P.
Fluid Dynamics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
In stars and planets natural processes heat convective flows in the bulk of a convective region rather than at hard boundaries. By characterizing how convective dynamics are determined by the strength of an internal heating source we can gain insight into the processes driving astrophysical convection. Internally heated convection has been studied extensively in incompressible fluids, but the effects of stratification and compressibility have not been examined in detail. In this work, we study fully compressible convection driven by a spatially uniform heating source in 2D and 3D Cartesian, hydrodynamic simulations. We use a fixed temperature upper boundary condition which results in a system that is internally heated in the bulk and cooled at the top. We find that the flow speed, as measured by the Mach number, and turbulence, as measured by the Reynolds number, can be independently controlled by separately varying the characteristic temperature gradient from internal heating and the diffusivities. 2D simulations at a fixed Mach number (flow speed) demonstrate consistent power at low wavenumber as diffusivities are decreased. We observe convection where the velocity distribution is skewed towards cold, fast downflows, and that the flow speed is related to the length scale and entropy gradient of the upper boundary where the downflows are driven. We additionally find a heat transport scaling law which is consistent with prior incompressible work.
title Internally heated and fully compressible convection: flow morphology and scaling laws
topic Fluid Dynamics
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.15380