Experimental Evidence for the Existence of the Ultimate Regime in Rapidly Rotating Turbulent Thermal Convection.

What is the final state of turbulence when the driving parameter approaches infinity? For the traditional Rayleigh-Bénard convection, a possible ultimate scaling dependence of the heat transport (quantified by the Nusselt number Nu) on the Rayleigh number (Ra), which can be extrapolated to arbitrarily high Ra, is predicted by theories. The existence of the ultimate scaling has been intensively debated in the past decades. In this Letter, we adopt a novel supergravitational thermal convection experimental setup to study the possible transition to the ultimate regime. This system is characterized by the combined effects of radial-dependent centrifugal force, the Earth's gravity, and the Coriolis force. With an effective gravity up to 100 times the Earth's gravity, both Ra and shear Reynolds number can be boosted due to the increase of the buoyancy driving and the additional Coriolis forces. With over a decade of Ra range, we demonstrate the existence of ultimate regime with four direct evidences: the ultimate scaling dependence of Nu versus Ra; the appearance of the turbulent velocity boundary layer profile; the enhanced strength of the shear Reynolds number; and the new statistical properties of local temperature fluctuations. The present findings will greatly improve the understanding of the flow dynamics in geophysical and astrophysical flows.

Supergravitational turbulent thermal convection.

High-Rayleigh number convective turbulence is ubiquitous in many natural phenomena and in industries, such as atmospheric circulations, oceanic flows, flows in the fluid core of planets, and energy generations. In this work, we present a novel approach to boost the Rayleigh number in thermal convection by exploiting centrifugal acceleration and rapidly rotating a cylindrical annulus to reach an effective gravity of 60 times Earth's gravity. We show that in the regime where the Coriolis effect is strong, the scaling exponent of Nusselt number versus Rayleigh number exceeds one-third once the Rayleigh number is large enough. The convective rolls revolve in prograde direction, signifying the emergence of zonal flow. The present findings open a new avenue on the exploration of high-Rayleigh number turbulent thermal convection and will improve the understanding of the flow dynamics and heat transfer processes in geophysical and astrophysical flows and other strongly rotating systems.

Controlling Heat Transport and Flow Structures in Thermal Turbulence Using Ratchet Surfaces.

In this combined experimental and numerical study on thermally driven turbulence in a rectangular cell, the global heat transport and the coherent flow structures are controlled with an asymmetric ratchetlike roughness on the top and bottom plates. We show that, by means of symmetry breaking due to the presence of the ratchet structures on the conducting plates, the orientation of the large scale circulation roll (LSCR) can be locked to a preferred direction even when the cell is perfectly leveled out. By introducing a small tilt to the system, we show that the LSCR orientation can be tuned and controlled. The two different orientations of LSCR give two quite different heat transport efficiencies, indicating that heat transport is sensitive to the LSCR direction over the asymmetric roughness structure. Through a quantitative analysis of the dynamics of thermal plume emissions and the orientation of the LSCR over the asymmetric structure, we provide a physical explanation for these findings. The current work has important implications for passive and active flow control in engineering, biofluid dynamics, and geophysical flows.