Scalings of field correlations and heat transport in turbulent convection

Abstract

Using direct numerical simulations of Rayleigh-Bénard convection under free-slip boundary condition, we show that the normalized correlation function between the vertical velocity field and the temperature field, as well as the normalized viscous dissipation rate, scales as Ra^{-0.22} for moderately large Rayleigh number Ra. This scaling accounts for the Nusselt number Nu exponent of approximately 0.3, as observed in experiments. Numerical simulations also reveal that the aforementioned normalized correlation functions are constants for the convection simulation under periodic boundary conditions.