New bounds for heat transport in internally heated convection at infinite Prandtl number

Abstract

We prove new bounds on the heat flux out of the bottom boundary, $\mathcal{F}_B$, for a fluid at infinite Prandtl number, heated internally between isothermal parallel plates under two kinematic boundary conditions. In uniform internally heated convection, the supply of heat equally leaves the domain by conduction when there is no flow. When the heating, quantified by the Rayleigh number, $R$, is sufficiently large, turbulent convection ensues and decreases the heat leaving the domain through the bottom boundary. In the case of no-slip boundary conditions, with the background field method, we prove that $\mathcal{F}_B \gtrsim R^{-2/3} - R^{-1/2}\log{(1-R^{-2/3})}$ up to a positive constant independent of the Rayleigh and Prandtl numbers. Whereas between stress-free boundaries we prove, $\mathcal{F}_B \gtrsim R^{-40/29} - R^{-35/29}\log{(1-R^{-40/29})}$. We perform a numerical study of the system in two dimensions up to a Rayleigh number of $5\times10^9$ with the spectral solver Dedalus. The numerical investigations indicate that $\mathcal{F}_B \sim R^{-0.092} $ and $\mathcal{F}_B \sim R^{-0.12}$ for the two kinematic boundary conditions respectively. The gap between the bounds and simulations, and our constructions in the proofs highlight that there still exists room for optimisation of bounds for $\mathcal{F}_B$.