| Abstract: | Abstract Chandrasekhar (1961) has summarized the stability results of Bénard convection in a rotating fluid for the cases where the boundary surfaces are both rigid and free, and for both exchange of stabilities and overstability. His analysis provides very accurate results for a limited range of Taylor number J. Bisshopp and Niiler (1965) presented an asymptotic analysis of the rigid boundary problem for exchange of stabilities which is valid for very large Taylor number. The present paper makes use of modern rotating fluid theory to develop an approximate scheme for evaluating the Rayleigh number and other parameters and variables. Known asymptotic results for the free boundary problem at large J are used and an expansion in powers of E1/6 (the Ekman number, E = 2J ?½) yields a sequence of equations and appropriate boundary conditions for the rigid boundary problem. After the algorithm for the calculation is developed, results are given for the problem to second order in the expansion parameter for the case of exchange of stabilities and to first order in the expansion parameters for the overstable case. Ekman boundary layers are important in the development as one might expect. However, an additional, diffusive boundary layer of thickness E? is necessary to provide the details of the temperature field. This boundary layer is the thermal response in the vertical direction to the horizontal spacing of the cells which is also order E?. The horizontal spacing of the cells is essentially a series of contiguous, Stewartson (1957) layers of thickness E?. |
