ISSN Online: 2377-424X
ISBN Print: 1-56032-797-9
International Heat Transfer Conference 11
CHARACTERIZATION OF UNSTABLE MODES IN PARTITIONED CAVITIES
Sinopsis
We investigate transition to unsteadiness of natural convection in cavities with internal heated partitions. This is done by integrating the unsteady equations or by solving directly for the steady state solutions even when unstable and computing the corresponding eigenmodes. It is found that the solution first becomes unstable to a symmetry-breaking mode, and an accurate critical value is obtained from measurement of its temporal growth rate for several Rayleigh number values. The corresponding eigenmode of the adjoint of the Jacobian is also computed. A preliminary experiment of periodic forcing shows that the amplitude of the forced solution is maximum if forcing is done at the location where the adjoint eigenmode is of maximum amplitude.