Affiliation:
1. Institute of Mechanics and Engineering (I2M), University of Bordeaux, France
Abstract
The case of a supercritical fluid heated from below (Rayleigh-Bénard) in a rectangular cavity is first presented. The stability of the two boundary layers (hot and cold) is analyzed by numerically solving the Navier-Stokes equations with a van der Waals gas and stability diagrams are derived. The very large compressibility and the very low heat diffusivity of near critical pure fluids induce very large density gradients which lead to a Rayleigh–Taylor-like gravitational instability of the heat diffusion layer and results in terms of growth rates and wave numbers are presented. Depending on the relative direction of the interface or the boundary layer with respect to vibration, vibrational forces can destabilize a thermal boundary layer, resulting in parametric/Rayleigh vibrational instabilities. This has recently been achieved by using a numerical model which does not require any equation of state and directly calculates properties from NIST data base, for instance.