Seminar - Feng Xu - Natural convection in a cavity

Wednesday 28 October 2009, 1.10 pm - 1.55 pm
Civil Engineering Lecture Theatre 3

Abstract:
Natural convection flows are extensively present in various industrial systems and in nature such as the ocean and atmosphere. In this talk, I will show the laboratory study results of natural convection flows in a cavity modeling the flows in nature and industry, and simply describe the adopted theoretic, numerical and experimental methods. The visualizations and simulations of the transient flows will be presented, and the fundamental scaling relations about horizontal gravity currents and starting plumes will be characterized. In addition, according to the numerical and experimental results, the further discussion of the instabilities of the flows and the corresponding impact on heat transfer will be given, and the mechanism responsible for instabilities will be described in this talk.