Experimental investigation of natural convection induced by internal heat generation

Dilatation of a convection cell with respect to its Rayleigh number, one of the problems in internally heated convection, was quantitatively investigated by analyzing temperature field in a cell. The temperature field visualized by a Thermo-chromic Liquid Crystal (TLC) expresses the cell dilatation. A calibration system was developed to convert the visualized photographs of the temperature field to the temperature field. A calibration curve correlating color information extracted from the photograph and temperature was determined from the approximately linear temperature distribution in the horizontal fluid layer using the hue method. Photos taken at various internal Rayleigh numbers were converted to the temperature field by the obtained curve. Extracting individual cells from a temperature field achieves a quantitative expression of the cell dilatation as the variation of the wavenumber of the cell with Rayleigh number increases. The temperature profile in a cell shows that high temperature areas appear at the apexes of the cell, largely different from the profile obtained by linear theory.