2006/02/18 by E. Calzavarini, Enrico Calzavarini, C. R. Doering +7 · 1 citation
Engineering · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #nlin.CD
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.73.035301
published as Phys. Rev. E 73, 035301(R) (2006) · 4 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. E - rapid communications
arxiv created 2006/02/18 · openalex publication_date 2006/03/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
It is shown that homogeneous Rayleigh-Bénard flow, i.e., Rayleigh-Bénard turbulence with periodic boundary conditions in all directions and a volume forcing of the temperature field by a mean gradient, has a family of exact, exponentially growing, separable solutions of the full nonlinear system of equations. These solutions are clearly manifest in numerical simulations above a computable critical value of the Rayleigh number. In our numerical simulations they are subject to secondary numerical noise and resolution dependent instabilities that limit their growth to produce statistically steady turbulent transport.