Micropolar meets Newtonian in three dimensions. The Rayleigh--B{\'e}nard problem for large Prandtl numbers

Abstract

We consider the Rayleigh--B\'{e}nard problem for the three--dimensional Boussinesq system for the micropolar fluid. We introduce the notion of the multivalued eventual semiflow and prove the existence of the two-space global attractor $\mathcal{A}^K$ corresponding to weak solutions, for every micropolar parameter $K\geq 0$ denoting the deviation of the considered system from the classical Rayleigh--B\'{e}nard problem for the Newtonian fluid. We prove that for every $K$ the attractor $\mathcal{A}^K$ is the smallest compact, attracting, and invariant set. Moreover, the semiflow restricted to this attractor is single-valued and governed by strong solutions. Further, we prove that the global attractors $\mathcal{A}^K$ converge to $\mathcal{A}^0$ upper semicontinuously in Kuratowski sense as $K\to 0$, and that the projection of $\mathcal{A}^0$ on the restricted phase space corresponding to the classical Rayleigh--B\'{e}nard problem is the global attractor for the latter problem, having the invariance property. These results are established under the assumption that the Prandtl number is relatively large with respect to the Rayleigh number.