The effect of vertical vibrations on the onset of convection in a planar rotating layer

Abstract

The effect of vertical vibrations on the convection in a rotating planar fluid layer heated from below was studied. In this case a modulation parameter, the acceleration due to gravity, appears in the problem. The modulation of the parameter may have a significant effect on the onset of convective instability. Parameter modulation in nonrotating layers has been investigated in earlier work [1–3]. The presence of rotation significantly increases the complexity of the mathematical problem, introducing an additional dependence of the solution on the Taylor number Ta and the Prandtl number Pr. Furthermore, an oscillatory convection regime can occur at the stability limit in rotating fluids with Pr < 1. Parameter modulation in the rotating fluid may not only lead to a change in the stability limit and critical wavelength but also to a change in the eigenfrequency of the oscillatory convection. Rauscher and Kelly [4] examined the effect of parameter modulation on the convective stability of a rotating fluid only for the particular case of a sinusoidal variation in the temperature gradient with a small amplitude for Pr = 1, i.e., the effect of modulation was studied on only a steady convection regime.