TITLE:
Laminar-Turbulent Bifurcation Scenario in 3D Rayleigh-Benard Convection Problem
AUTHORS:
Nikolay M. Evstigneev
KEYWORDS:
Rayleigh-Benard Convection, Direct Numerical Simulation, Laminar-Turbulent Transition, Bifurcations, Nonlinear Dynamics, Turbulence, Chaos
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Fluid Dynamics,
Vol.6 No.4,
December
30,
2016
ABSTRACT: We are considering two initial-boundary value problems for Rayleigh-Benard convection in Oberbeck-Boussinesq approximation for incompressible fluid in 3D-rectangular domain with 4:4:1 geometric ratio with periodicity in two directions and cubic domain with 1:1:1 ratio and zero velocity and temperature gradient boundary conditions. For this purpose, we use two numerical method: one is a Pseudo-Spectral-Galerkin method with trigonometric-Chebyshev polynomials and the other is finite element/volume method with WENO interpolation for advection term. Numerical methods are presented shortly and are benchmarked against known DNS data and against one another (for quasi-periodic domain problem). Then we perform stability analysis using analytical expression for main stationary solutions and eigenvalue numerical analysis by applying Implicitly Restarted Arnoldi (IRA) method. The IRA is used to perform linear stability analysis, find bifurcations of stationary points and analyze eigenvalues of monodromy matrices. Thus characteristic exponents of the system for time periodic solutions (limited cycles of various periods and resonance invariant tori) are computed. We show, numerically, the existence of multistable rotes to chaos through chaotic fractal attractors, full Feigenbaum-Sharkovski cascades and multidimensional torus attractors (Landau-Hopf scenario). The existence of these attractors is shown through analysis of phase subspaces projections, Poincare sections and eigenvalue analysis of numerically computed DNS data. These attractors burst into chaos with the increase of Rayleigh number either through resonance and phase-locking or through emergence of singular chaotic attractors.