Convection in Rotating Fluids

Book excerpt: Spatial inhomogeneity of heating of fluids in the gravity field is the cause of all motions in nature: in the atmosphere and the oceans on Earth, in astrophysical and planetary objects. All natural objects rotate and convective motions in rotating fluids are of interest in many geophysical and astrophysical phenomena. In many industrial applications, too (crystal growth, semiconductor manufacturing), heating and rotation are the main mechanisms defining the structure and quality of the material. Depending on the geometry of the systems and the mutual orientation of temperature and gravity field, a variety of phenomena will arise in rotating fluids, such as regular and oscillating waves, intensive solitary vortices and regular vortex grids, interacting vortices and turbulent mixing. In this book the authors elucidate the physical essence of these phenomena, determining and classifying flow regimes in the space of similarity numbers. The theoretical and computational results are presented only when the results help to explain basic qualitative motion characteristics. The book will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in fluid mechanics, meteorology, oceanography and astrophysics, crystallography, heat and mass transfer.