An investigation into the maximum entropy production principle in chaotic Rayleigh-Bénard convection

The hypothesis is made that the temperature and velocity fields in Rayleigh-Bénard convection can be expressed as a superposition of the active modes with time-dependent amplitudes, even in the chaotic regime. The maximum entropy production principle is interpreted as a variational principle in which the amplitudes of the modes are the variational degrees of freedom. For a given Rayleigh number, the maximum heat flow for any set of amplitudes is sought, subject only to the constraints that the energy equation be obeyed and the fluid be incompressible. The additional hypothesis is made that all temporal correlations between modes are zero, so that only the mean-squared amplitudes are optimising variables. The resulting maximal Nusselt number is close to experimental determinations. The Nusselt number would appear to be simply related to the number of active modes, in particular the number of distinct vertical modes. It is significant that reasonable results are obtained for the optimised Nusselt number in that the dynamics (the Navier-Stokes equation) is not used as a constraint. This suggests grounds for optimism that the maximum entropy production principle, interpreted in this variational manner, can provide a reasonable guide to the dynamic steady states of non-equilibrium systems whose detailed dynamics are unknown.