Computation of Convective Flow with Gravity Modulation in Rectangular Cavities

In this work, a computational study is presented for the investigation of gravity modulation (g-jitter) effects in thermally driven cavity flows at terrestrial and microgravity environments. The two-dimensional, time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations are numerically integrated by a time-split method using direct matrix solvers. Computations at terrestrial gravity are utilized to assess the effects of adiabatic side-wall boundary conditions as well as the full nonlinearity of the governing equations on the sinusoidally forced Benard problem studied by Gresho and Sani.(1) The low-g calculations focus on the establishment of critical frequency ranges and consider the effects of modulation direction and randomness. The applicability of linear analysis in the excitable frequency range at low g is also discussed.