The onset of laminar Rayleigh-Bénard convection is investigated for a low-Prandtl number liquid metal in a cylindrical container. All surfaces are considered to be solid and no-slip. Two cases are considered for the thermal boundary conditions at the side wall: conducting and insulated surfaces. A Chebyshev Galerkin spectral model is used to reduce the governing Boussinesq system to a first-order system of ordinary differential equations. A local stability analysis using the linearized system determines the first critical Rayleigh number. The results are compared with experimental data and a numerical study. / Master of Science
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/45038 |
| Date | 06 October 2009 |
| Creators | Dietz, Charles Miller |
| Contributors | Civil Engineering, Diplas, Panayiotis, Kibler, David F., Loganathan, G. V. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | xiii, 123 leaves, BTD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 28704630, LD5655.V855_1993.D548.pdf |
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