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benchmark01_rayleigh_benard

Robert Sawko edited this page Mar 16, 2021 · 3 revisions

Benchmark01: Rayleigh-Bénard convection

This benchmark considers the fluid instability that develops when a layer of fluid is heated from below and cooled from the top (see, e.g., Chandrasekhar 1961).

Input files for the benchmark are located in the {CORAL_ROOT}/etc/benchmarks/01_Rayleigh_Benard_stressFree.

The equations (and their linear stability) are detailed in this jupyter notebook.

Create a folder following the standard procedure, then copy the coral.* files there. Run the executable with a handful of cores. It stops after 10 minutes. One can then display the time series of kinetic energy:

python plot_volAvg_timeseries.py uu vv ww

kinetic energy time series

An exponential growth is visible in both components of the kinetic energy, for t<0.4. Analytically, the growth rate coefficient can be determined as a function of the horizontal wavenumber. The optimum is represented by the orange dot: growth rate vs wavenumber (analytic)

One may check the good agreement between the growth rate of the numerical solution (solid or dashed blue lines below) and the analytic, optimal growth rate (black horizontal dash-dotted line):

python linearGrowthrate_numerical_vs_analytical.py 

growth-rate time-series (Coral)