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First Symposium on Turbulence and Shear Flow Phenomena
September, 12-15, 1999, Doubletree Resort, Santa Barbara, California, USA

DOI: 10.1615/TSFP1

SCALING LAWS OF TEMPERATURE AND VELOCITY FLUCTUATIONS IN TURBULENT THERMAL CONVECTION

pages 539-544
DOI: 10.1615/TSFP1.870
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ABSTRACT

Experiments by Castaing et al. (1989) showed that the Nusselt number versus Rayleigh number power law scaling exponent in Rayleigh-Benard convection is 2/7 rather than the classical 1/3 over a large range of Rayleigh number (107−-1012). They derived two scaling theories (λ-I and λ-II) that result in the 2/7 power law scaling. Adrian (1996) derived corresponding scaling laws for the vertical profiles of the r.m.s. temperature and velocity fluctuations, and provided experimental evidence in support of the λ-layer scalings. However, due to the scatter in the experimental data for the r.m.s. temperature profiles in unsteady non-penetrative convection, the data was not able to select between the two λ-layer scalings. The present set of experiments in Rayleigh-Benard convection were conducted to provide a set of well-converged data that might support of the λ-layer scalings. However, the r.m.s. data over the outer layer do not conclusively select between the λ-I and λ-II scalings. The data are fit by a power-law with exponent −0.4, not with the −1/2 exponent required by the λ-I theory. And, the log-law required by the λ-II theory was found not to be a good fit to the data. Thus, neither of the theories adequately describes the temperature fluctuation data.

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