Transient Double Diffusive Convection in a Vertical Enclosure With Asymmetrical Boundary Conditions

This study deals with the numerical analysis of transient heat and species transfer by natural convection in a binary fluid vertical layer. The cavity is differentially heated and a solutal buoyancy force is created by imposing a concentration step at one vertical wall: This refers to the experimental situation where the composition gradient inducing the solutal buoyancy force is created by melting of pure ice in a salty solution. The constitution of the flow structure and the time evolution of the heat and mass transfer characteristics are studied for opposing body forces over a range of thermal and solutal Rayleigh numbers. The numerical results allow to provide a better insight into the mechanisms driving the heat and species transfer at high Lewis number thermohaline convection. [S0022-1481(00)00303-0]