Natural convection in horizontal layers with lateral heating at various Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers

Abstract

Abstract The paper presents the results of numerical solution of the problem of thermal convection of an incompressible liquid in a horizontally elongated layer with lateral heat supply. In this paper the influence of Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers of boundary conditions on the flow structure and on the existence of counter-flows are considered. It is also shown that for laminar convection modes, flows with Prandtl numbers less than 0.01 differ qualitatively from the flow of a liquid with a zero Prandtl number, so the approximation of the zero value of the Prandtl number may not always be correct.