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Stellmach S, Lischper M, Julien K, et al. Approaching the asymptotic regime of rapidly rotating convection: boundary layers versus interior dynamics. Phys Rev Lett. 2014;113(25):254501doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.254501.
Stellmach, S., Lischper, M., Julien, K., Vasil, G., Cheng, J. S., Ribeiro, A., King, E. M., & Aurnou, J. M. (2014). Approaching the asymptotic regime of rapidly rotating convection: boundary layers versus interior dynamics. Physical review letters, 113(25), 254501. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.254501
Stellmach, S, et al. "Approaching the asymptotic regime of rapidly rotating convection: boundary layers versus interior dynamics." Physical review letters vol. 113,25 (2014): 254501. doi: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.254501
Stellmach S, Lischper M, Julien K, Vasil G, Cheng JS, Ribeiro A, King EM, Aurnou JM. Approaching the asymptotic regime of rapidly rotating convection: boundary layers versus interior dynamics. Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Dec 19;113(25):254501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.254501. Epub 2014 Dec 15. PMID: 25554884.
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Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Dec 19;113(25):254501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.254501. Epub 2014 Dec 15.

Approaching the asymptotic regime of rapidly rotating convection: boundary layers versus interior dynamics.

Physical review letters

S Stellmach, M Lischper, K Julien, G Vasil, J S Cheng, A Ribeiro, E M King, J M Aurnou

Affiliations

  1. Institut für Geophysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster D-48149, Germany.
  2. Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
  3. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sydney, Sydney NSW 2006, Australia.
  4. Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1567, USA.
  5. Miller Institute and Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Berkeley, California 94720-4767, USA.

PMID: 25554884 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.254501

Abstract

Rapidly rotating Rayleigh-Bénard convection is studied by combining results from direct numerical simulations (DNS), laboratory experiments, and asymptotic modeling. The asymptotic theory is shown to provide a good description of the bulk dynamics at low, but finite Rossby number. However, large deviations from the asymptotically predicted heat transfer scaling are found, with laboratory experiments and DNS consistently yielding much larger Nusselt numbers than expected. These deviations are traced down to dynamically active Ekman boundary layers, which are shown to play an integral part in controlling heat transfer even for Ekman numbers as small as 10^{-7}. By adding an analytical parametrization of the Ekman transport to simulations using stress-free boundary conditions, we demonstrate that the heat transfer jumps from values broadly compatible with the asymptotic theory to states of strongly increased heat transfer, in good quantitative agreement with no-slip DNS and compatible with the experimental data. Finally, similarly to nonrotating convection, we find no single scaling behavior, but instead that multiple well-defined dynamical regimes exist in rapidly rotating convection systems.

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