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.