New Insights from Simulations of Rayleigh-Benard Convection

 

M. Paul, M. Cross

California Institute of Technology

 

 

Rayleigh-Benard convection represents a spatially extended system driven far from equilibrium. The growth of domains, or coarsening, of striped patterns from initial random thermal perturbations as well as the pattern dynamics are studied by performing numerical simulations of the Boussinesq equations in large domains with realistic boundary conditions. Comparisons are made with theory and experiment where possible.