GROWTH-PATTERN FORMATION IN BENARD FLOWS

The effects of Benard flows on diffusion-limited aggregation (DLA) is investigated by a growth pattern formation (GPF) computational model. The GPF introduced consists of a DLA process driven by a thermal convection field in a plane viscous incompressible flow. The flow regime is governed by the Grashoff, Prandtl and Schmidt dimensionless parameters. Moving from low to high Grashoff numbers, the particle motions obtained change from primarily stochastic Brownian trajectories, with Hausdorff dimension 2.0, to mainly deterministic curvilinear trajectories, with Hausdorff dimension 1.0. Correspondingly, the resulting clusters change their Hausdorff dimension from the DLA fractal to 1.0.