Quasiperiodic routes to chaos in confined two-dimensional differential convection.

The complete cascade of bifurcations from steady to chaotic convection, as the Rayleigh number is varied, is considered numerically inside an air-filled differentially heated cavity. The system is assumed to be two-dimensional and is invariant under a generalized reflection about the center of the cavity. In the neighborhood of several codimension-two points, two main routes emerge, characterized by different symmetries of the first oscillatory eigenstate. Along these two competing routes, different sequences of bifurcations and symmetry breakings lead from the steady base flow to the hyperchaotic regime. Several families of two- and three-frequency tori have been identified via the computation of the leading Lyapunov exponents. Modal structures extracted from time series reveal the occurrence of slow internal oscillations in the center of the cavity and faster wall modes confined to vertical boundary layers. Further quasiperiodicity windows have been detected on each route. The different regimes eventually disappear in a boundary crisis in favor of a single, globally symmetric, hyperchaotic regime.

Transition to chaos of natural convection between two infinite differentially heated vertical plates.

Natural convection of air between two infinite vertical differentially heated plates is studied analytically in two dimensions (2D) and numerically in two and three dimensions (3D) for Rayleigh numbers Ra up to 3 times the critical value Ra(c)=5708. The first instability is a supercritical circle pitchfork bifurcation leading to steady 2D corotating rolls. A Ginzburg-Landau equation is derived analytically for the flow around this first bifurcation and compared with results from direct numerical simulation (DNS). In two dimensions, DNS shows that the rolls become unstable via a Hopf bifurcation. As Ra is further increased, the flow becomes quasiperiodic, and then temporally chaotic for a limited range of Rayleigh numbers, beyond which the flow returns to a steady state through a spatial modulation instability. In three dimensions, the rolls instead undergo another pitchfork bifurcation to 3D structures, which consist of transverse rolls connected by counter-rotating vorticity braids. The flow then becomes time dependent through a Hopf bifurcation, as exchanges of energy occur between the rolls and the braids. Chaotic behavior subsequently occurs through two competing mechanisms: a sequence of period-doubling bifurcations leading to intermittency or a spatial pattern modulation reminiscent of the Eckhaus instability.

Low Mach number analysis of idealized thermoacoustic engines with numerical solution.

A model of an idealized thermoacoustic engine is formulated, coupling nonlinear flow and heat exchange in the heat exchangers and stack with a simple linear acoustic model of the resonator and load. Correct coupling results in an asymptotically consistent global model, in the small Mach number approximation. A well-resolved numerical solution is obtained for two-dimensional heat exchangers and stack. The model assumes that the heat exchangers and stack are shorter than the overall length by a factor of the order of a representative Mach number. The model is well-suited for simulation of the entire startup process, whereby as a result of some excitation, an initially specified temperature profile in the stack evolves toward a near-steady profile, eventually reaching stationary operation. A validation analysis is presented, together with results showing the early amplitude growth and approach of a stationary regime. Two types of initial excitation are used: Random noise and a small periodic wave. The set of assumptions made leads to a heat-exchanger section that acts as a source of volume but is transparent to pressure and to a local heat-exchanger model characterized by a dynamically incompressible flow to which a locally spatially uniform acoustic pressure fluctuation is superimposed.