Effect of Distant Sidewalls on Wave-Number Selection in Rayleigh-Bénard Convection

Abstract
An analysis is presented of the steady states of two-dimensional convection in a laterally finite rectangular container near threshold. It is shown that the presence of sidewalls severely restricts the allowed wave vectors which can occur in the bulk of the container. This effect provides a possible mechanism to explain the observed wavelength increase of convective rolls with increasing Rayleigh numbers.

This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit: