A numerical study of flow and thermal fields in tilted Rayleigh–Bénard convection

Convection in enclosures heated from below can affect crystals grown from melts. Experiments designed to study such convection can be influenced by small tilts of the experimental system with respect to gravity. Because of the additional body force, tilting can mask flow transition points, making comparisons with stability studies difficult. In this study, the classic Rayleigh–Bénard problem is re-examined numerically with the addition of various tilt angles in cubical enclosures of liquid tin (Pr = 0.008). The results presented are applied to experiments which measure both molecular diffusivities as well as convection in the melt.