Ultimate Regime of Convection: robustness to poor thermal properties of the plates

Abstract

A transition to Kraichnan ultimate regime of convection has been reported in very high Rayleigh numbers experiments, but not in all of them. These apparently contradictory results can be explained by a recent phenomenological model which accounts for the non-ideality of the plate thermal properties [Chill\`{a} et al, Physics of Fluids 16:2452 (2004)]. In this paper, we present a direct test of this model, using a low conductivity plate. We found an unaltered transition, not compatible with the model's predictions.