Experimental study of low-frequency oscillations and large-scale circulations in turbulent mixed convection

The formation and dynamics of large-scale circulations in forced and mixed convection has been studied at ambient and elevated fluid pressure by means of particle image velocimetry and temperature measurements. The study has been conducted in two rectangular containers of the same shape and aspect ratios of Γxz = 1 and Γyz = 5. For the measurements at high fluid pressure the dimensions of the cell have been scaled down by a factor of 5. Air with Pr = 0.7 has been used as fluid in both configurations. Forced convection has been investigated at Re = 1.01 × 104 and mixed convection has been studied at Ar = 3.3, Re = 1.01 × 104 and Ra = 2.4 × 108. In this configuration low-frequency oscillations in the heat transfer between the inlet and outlet have been found for mixed convection. Instantaneous velocity vector fields obtained from particle image velocimetry have been analysed using proper orthogonal decomposition and an algorithm to detect the core and the core centre position of large-scale circulations.