From Intermittent to Nonintermittent Behavior in Two Dimensional Thermal Convection in a Soap Bubble

Fanny Seychelles (1) , François Ingremeau (1) , Christophe Pradère (2) , Hamid Kellay (1)

1 CPMOH - Centre de physique moléculaire optique et hertzienne
2 TREFLE - Transferts, écoulements, fluides, énergétique

Turbulent thermal convection in half a soap bubble heated from below displays a new and surprising transition from intermittent to nonintermittent behavior for the temperature field. This transition is observed here by studying the high order moments of temperature increments. For high temperature gradients, these structure functions display Bolgiano-like scaling predicted some 60 years ago with no observable deviations. The probability distribution functions of these increments are Gaussian throughout the scaling range. These measurements are corroborated with additional velocity structure function measurements.

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]; Dynamique des Fluides [physics.flu-dyn]

Fanny Seychelles, François Ingremeau, Christophe Pradère, Hamid Kellay. From Intermittent to Nonintermittent Behavior in Two Dimensional Thermal Convection in a Soap Bubble. Physical Review Letters, 2010, 105 (26), pp.264502. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.264502⟩. ⟨hal-00672108⟩