The Influence of the Angle between the Wind and the Isothermal Surfaces on the Boundary Layer Structures in Turbulent Thermal Convection

Abstract

We derive the asymptotes for the ratio of the thermal to viscous boundary layer thicknesses for infinite and infinitesimal Prandtl numbers Pr as functions of the angle β between the large-scale circulation and an isothermal heated or cooled surface for the case of turbulent thermal convection with laminar-like boundary layers. For this purpose, we apply the Falkner-Skan ansatz,which is a generalization of the Prandtl-Blasius one to a nonhorizontal free-stream flow above the viscous boundary layer. Based on our direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent Rayleigh-B´enard convection for Pr = 0.1, 1, and 10 and moderate Rayleigh numbers up to 10^8 we evaluate the value of β that is found to be around 0.7π for all investigated cases. Our theoretical predictions for the boundary layer thicknesses for this β and the considered Pr are in good agreement with the DNS results.