Unsteady confined buoyant plumes

Abstract

Two-dimensional time-dependent buoyancy-induced flows above a horizontal line heat source inside rectangular vessels, with adiabatic sidewalls and top and bottom walls maintained at uniform temperature, are studied numerically. Transitions to unsteady flows are performed by direct simulations for various depths of immersion of the source in the central vertical plane of air-filled vessels. For a square vessel and a line source near the bottom wall, the numerical solutions exhibit a sequence of instabilities, called natural swaying motion of confined plumes, beginning with a periodic regime having a high fundamental frequency followed by a two-frequency locked regime. Then, broadband components appearing in the spectra indicate chaotic behaviour and a weakly turbulent motion arises via an intermittent route to chaos. For rectangular vessels of aspect ratio greater than 2 and depths of immersion greater than the width, the flow undergoes a pitchfork bifurcation. This symmetry breaking is driven by the destabilization of an upper unstable layer of stagnant fluid above the plume. Then a subcritical Hopf bifurcation occurs. On the other hand, if the depth of immersion is lower than the width of the vessel, a stable layer of fluid is at rest below the line source. Then penetrative convection sets the whole air-filled vessel in motion and an oscillatory motion of very low frequency arises through supercritical Hopf bifurcation followed by a two-frequency locked state.