Evolution of Staircase Structures in Diffusive Convection

Summary

Diffusive convection (DC) widely occurs in natural processes and engineering applications, characterized by a series of staircases with homogeneous convecting layers and stratified interfaces. An experimental procedure is described to simulate the evolution process of the DC staircase structure, including the generation, development and disappearance, in a rectangular tank.

Abstract

Diffusive convection (DC) occurs when the vertical stratified density is controlled by two opposing scalar gradients that have distinctly different molecular diffusivities, and the larger- and smaller- diffusivity scalar gradients have negative and positive contributions for the density distribution, respectively. The DC occurs in many natural processes and engineering applications, for example, oceanography, astrophysics and metallurgy. In oceans, one of the most remarkable features of DC is that the vertical temperature and salinity profiles are staircase-like structure, composed of consecutive steps with thick homogeneous convecting layers and relatively thin and high-gradient interfaces. The DC staircases have been observed in many oceans, especially in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, and play an important role on the ocean circulation and climatic change. In the Arctic Ocean, there exist basin-wide and persistent DC staircases in the upper and deep oceans. The DC process has an important effect on diapycnal mixing in the upper ocean and may significantly influence the surface ice-melting. Compared to the limitations of field observations, laboratory experiment shows its unique advantage to effectively examine the dynamic and thermodynamic processes in DC, because the boundary conditions and the controlled parameters can be strictly adjusted. Here, a detailed protocol is described to simulate the evolution process of DC staircase structure, including its generation, development and disappearance, in a rectangular tank filled with stratified saline water. The experimental setup, evolution process, data analysis, and discussion of results are described in detail.

Introduction

Double diffusive convection (DDC) is one of the most important vertical mixing processes. It occurs when the vertical density distribution of the stratified water column is controlled by two or more scalar components gradients of opposite directions, where the components have distinctly different molecular diffusivities¹. It widely occurs in oceanography², the atmosphere³, geology⁴, astrophysics⁵, material science⁶, metallurgy⁷, and architectural engineering⁸. DDC is present in a....

Protocol

1. Working Tank

Note: The experiment is carried out in a rectangular tank. The tank includes top and bottom plates and a side wall. The top and bottom plates are made of copper with electroplated surfaces. There is a water chamber within the top plate. An electric heating pad is inserted in the bottom plate. The side wall is made of transparent Plexiglas. The tank size is L_x = 257 mm (length), L_y = 65 mm (width) and L_z = 257 mm (height). The thickness of the side.......

Discussion

In this paper a detailed experimental protocol is described to simulate the thermohaline DC staircase structures in a rectangular tank. An initial linear density stratification of working fluid is constructed using the two-tank method. The top plate is kept at a constant temperature and the bottom one at constant heat flux. The whole evolution process of the DC staircase, including its generation, development, mergence, and disappearance, are visualized with the shadowgraph technique, and the variances of the temperature.......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Rectangular tank			Custom made part
Plexiglas			Custom made part
Electric heating pad			Custom made part
Distilled water			Multiple suppliers
Optical table	Liansheng Inc.	MRT-P/B
Thermiostors			Custom made part
Digital multimeter	Keithley Inc	Model 2700
Micro-scale conductivity and temperature instrument (MSCTI)	PME. Inc.	Model 125
Multifunction data acquisition (MDA)	MCC. Inc.	USB-2048
Motorized precision translation stage (MPTS)	Thorlabs Inc.	LTS300
Tracing paper			Multiple suppliers
LED lamp			Multiple suppliers
Camcorder	Sony Inc.	XDR-XR550
De-gassed fresh water			Custom made part
Saline water			Custom made part
Flexible tube			Multiple suppliers
Electric magnetic stirrer	Meiyingpu Inc.	MYP2011-100
Peristaltic pump	Zhisun Inc.	DDBT-201
Refrigerated circulator	Polyscience Inc.	Model 9702
Plastic soft tube			Multiple suppliers
Direct-current power supply	GE Inc.	GPS-3030
Matlab	MathWorks Inc.	R2012a