Effect of thermal modulation on the onset of convection in a rotating fluid layer

Abstract

The stability of a rotating horizontal fluid layer heated from below is examined when, the walls of the layer are subjected to time-periodic temperature modulation. The linear stability analysis is used to study the effect of infinitesimal disturbances. A regular perturbation method based on small amplitude of applied temperature field is used to compute the critical values of Rayleigh number and wavenumber. The shift in critical Rayleigh number is calculated as a function of frequency of modulation, Taylor number and Prandtl number. It is established that the instability can be enhanced by the rotation at low frequency symmetric modulation and with moderate to high frequency lower wall temperature modulation, whereas the stability can be enhanced by the rotation in case of asymmetric modulation. The effect of Taylor number and Prandtl number on the stability of the system is also discussed. We found that by proper tuning of modulation frequency, Taylor number and Prandtl number it is possible to advance or delay the onset of convection. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.