ENGINEERING AND CFD

Turbulent convection flows in nature and technology often show prominent and nearly regular patterns on their largest scales which we term turbulent superstructures. Their appearance challenges the classical picture of turbulence in which a turbulent flow is considered as a tangle of chaotically moving vortices. Examples for superstructures in nature are cloud streets in the atmosphere or the granulation at the surface of the Sun. In several applications, this structure formation is additionally affected by magnetic fields. Our understanding of the origin of turbulent superstructures and their role for the turbulent transport is presently still incomplete and will be improved by direct numerical simulations of turbulent convection.

In many turbulent convection flows in nature and technology the thermal diffusivity is much higher than the kinematic viscosity which means that the Prandtl number is very low. Applications of this regime reach from deep solar convection, via convection in the liquid metal core of the Earth to liquid metal batteries for grid energy storage and nuclear engineering technology. Laboratory experiments in low-Prandtl-number convection for Pr < 0.1 have to be conducted in liquid metals which are inaccessible for laser imaging techniques and require analysis by ultrasound or X-rays. Direct numerical simulations of this regime of turbulent convection at high Rayleigh numbers are the only way to reveal the full three-dimensional structure of…

In many turbulent convection flows in nature and technology the thermal diffusivity is much higher than the kinematic viscosity which means that the Prandtl number is very low. Laboratory experiments in very low-Prandtl-number convection have to be conducted in liquid metals which are inaccessible for laser imaging techniques and require analysis by ultrasound or X-rays. Researchers of the TU Ilmenau and the Occidental College Los Angeles ran direct numerical simulations of this regime of turbulent convection at high Rayleigh numbers to reveal the full 3D structure of temperature and velocity fields.