Rayleigh-Bénard Convection; Patterns, Chaos, Spatiotemporal Chaos and Turbulence

Abstract

A coupled map lattice for convection is proposed, which consists of Eulerian and Lagrangian procedures. Simulations of the model not only reproduce a wide-range of phenomena in Rayleigh-Bénard convection experiments but also lead to several prediction of novel phenomena there: For small aspect ratios, the formation of convective rolls, their oscillation, many routes to chaos, and chaotic itinerancy are found, with the increase of the Rayleigh number. For large aspect ratios, the collective oscillation of convective rolls, travelling waves, coherent chaos, and spatiotemporal intermittency are observed. At high Rayleigh numbers, the transition from soft to hard turbulence is confirmed, as is characterized by the change of the temperature distribution from Gaussian to exponential. Roll formation in three-dimensional convection is also simulated, and found to reproduce experiments well.