Abstract
A review is presented of the laboratory experiments and simulations of the convection onset of a supercritical fluid, 3He, in a Rayleigh-Bénard cell after the start of a steady heat flow q from the bottom wall at the time t=0. The experiments were conducted at several temperatures along the critical isochore and over a wide range of q and measured the temperature drop ΔT(t) across the fluid layer. It was empirically found that the various characteristic times t i observed in the profile of ΔT(t), and also in the convection growth determined by numerical simulations, could each be expressed by t i /τ D as function of the Rayleigh number, where τ D is the diffusive relaxation time. This scaled representation is to be expected, as has been shown in a general demonstration by Michael Cross (unpublished) and its implications are discussed. A comparison of the profiles ΔT(t) from experiments and simulations are presented and various unresolved discrepancies will be discussed.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are much indebted to Dr Michael Cross for his demonstration of scaling, Eq. (3), and for additional illuminating and insightful correspondence. Thanks are also due to Dr Patrick Bontoux and Dr Isabelle Raspo for fruitful discussions on supercritical fluids. The reported numerical simulations were carried out at the M2P2 laboratory (UMR 6181 CNRS–Marseille–France) where the authors’ collaboration was initiated. This work has been presented at the 19th ‘Congrès Français de Mécanique’ in Marseille, August 2009 [18].
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Meyer, H., Accary, G. Time Scaling in the Convection Onset of Supercritical 3He. J Low Temp Phys 169, 282–290 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-012-0620-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-012-0620-9