The influences of non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) effects on flow instabilities and bifurcation characteristics of Rayleigh-Benard convection are examined. The working fluid is air with reference Prandtl number Pr = 0.71 and contained in two-dimensional rigid cavities of finite aspect ratios. The fluid flow is governed by the low-Mach-number equations, accounting for the NOB effects due to large temperature difference involving flow compressibility and variations of fluid viscosity and thermal conductivity with temperature. The intensity of NOB effects is measured by the dimensionless temperature differential epsilon. Linear stability analysis of the thermal conduction state is performed. An epsilon(2) scaling of the leading-order corrections of critical Rayleigh number Ra-cr and disturbance growth rate sigma due to NOB effects is identified, which is a consequence of an intrinsic symmetry of the system. The influences of weak NOB effects on flow instabilities are further studied by perturbation expansion of linear stability equations with regard to epsilon, and then the influence of aspect ratio A is investigated in detail. NOB effects are found to enhance (weaken) flow stability in large (narrow) cavities. Detailed contributions of compressibility, viscosity and buoyancy actions on disturbance kinetic energy growth are identified quantitatively by energy analysis. Besides, a weakly nonlinear theory is developed based on centre-manifold reduction to investigate the NOB influences on bifurcation characteristics near convection onset, and amplitude equations are constructed for both codimension-one and -two cases. Rich bifurcation regimes are observed based on amplitude equations and also confirmed by direct numerical simulation. Weakly nonlinear analysis is useful for organizing and understanding these simulation results.

We study the two-point correlation function of a freely decaying scalar in Kraichnan's model of advection by a Gaussian random velocity field that is stationary and white noise in time, but fractional Brownian in space with roughness exponent 0&lt;<i></i>&lt;2, appropriate to the inertial-convective range of the scalar. We find all self-similar solutions by transforming the scaling equation to Kummer's equation. It is shown that only those scaling solutions with scalar energy decay exponent <i>a</i>(<i>d</i>/<i></i>)+1 are statistically realizable, where <i>d</i> is space dimension and <i></i>=2<i></i>. An infinite sequence of invariants <i>J</i> _p, <i>p</i>=0,1,2,..., is pointed out, where <i>J</i> ₀ is Corrsin's integral invariant but the higher invariants appear to be new. We show that at least one of the invariants <i>J</i> ₀ or <i>J</i> ₁ must be nonzero (possibly infinite) for realizable initial data. Initial datum with a finite, nonzero invariantthe first being <i>J</i> _pconverges at long times to a scaling

We report on a three-dimensional direct numerical simulation study of flow structure and heat transport in the annular centrifugal Rayleigh-Bdnard convection (ACRBC) system, with cold inner and hot outer cylinders corotating axially, for the Rayleigh number range Ra is an element of [10(6), 10(8)] and radius ratio range eta = R-i/R-o is an element of [0.3, 0.9] (R-i and R-o are the radius of the inner and outer cylinders, respectively). This study focuses on the dependence of flow dynamics, heat transport and asymmetric mean temperature fields on the radius ratio eta. For the inverse Rossby number Ro(-1) = 1, as the Coriolis force balances inertial force, the flow is in the inertial regime. The mechanisms of zonal flow revolving in the prograde direction in this regime are attributed to the asymmetric movements of plumes and the different curvatures of the cylinders. The number of roll pairs is smaller than the circular roll hypothesis as the convection rolls are probably elongated by zonal flow. The physical mechanism of zonal flow is verified by the dependence of the drift frequency of the large-scale circulation (LSC) rolls and the space- and time-averaged azimuthal velocity on eta. The larger eta is, the weaker the zonal flow becomes. We show that the heat transport efficiency increases with eta. It is also found that the bulk temperature deviates from the arithmetic mean temperature and the deviation increases as eta decreases. This effect can be explained by a simple model that accounts for the curvature effects and the radially dependent centrifugal force in ACRBC.

Flow reversals in two-dimensional Rayleigh-Benard convection led by non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) effects due to large temperature differences arc studied by direct numerical simulation. Perfect gas is chosen as the working fluid and the Prandtl number is 0.71 for the reference state. 11 NOB effects are included, the flow pattern P-11 with only one dominant roll often becomes unstable by the growth of the cold corner roll, which sometimes results in cession-led flow reversals. By exploiting the vorticity transport equation, it is found that the asymmetries of buoyancy and viscous forces are responsible for the growth of the cold corner roll because both such asymmetries cause an imbalance between the corner rolls and the large-scale circulation (I.SC). The buoyancy force near the cold wall increases and decreases near the hot wall originating from the temperature-dependent isobaric thermal expansion coefficient alpha = 1/T if NOB effects are included; Moreover, the decreased dissipation due to lower viscosity is favourable for the growth of the cold corner roll, while the increased viscosity further suppresses the growth of the hot corner roll. Finally, it is found that the boundary layer near the cold wall plays an important role in the mass transport from LSC to corner rolls subject to mass conservation.

A key difficulty in the analysis and numerical approximation of the shallow water equations is the nonconservative product of measures due to the gravitational force acting on a sloped bottom. Solutions may be nonunique, and numerical schemes are not only consistent discretizations of the shallow water equations, but they also determine how to model the physics. Our derivation is based on a subcell reconstruction using infinitesimal singular layers at the cell boundaries, as inspired by S. Noelle, Y. Xing, and C.-W. Shu [J. Comput. Phys., 226 (2007), pp. 29-58]. One key step is to separate the singular measures. Another aspect is the reconstruction of the solution variables in the singular layers. We study three reconstructions. The first leads to the well-known scheme of Audusse et al., [SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 25 (2004), pp. 2050-2065], which introduces the hydrostatic reconstruction. The second is a modification proposed in [T. Morales de Luna, M. J. Castro D´ıaz, and C. Par´es, Appl. Math. Comput., 219 (2013), pp. 9012-9032], which analyzes whether a wave has enough energy to overcome a step. The third is our new scheme, which borrows its structure from the wet-dry front. For a number of cases discussed in recent years, where water runs down a hill, Audusse’s scheme converges slowly or fails. Morales’ scheme gives a visible improvement. Both schemes are clearly outperformed by our new scheme.