Turbulent thermal convection over rough surfaces

Convective heat transport has important applications in engineering and meteorology and a better understanding of heat transport phenomena would lead to improvements in technological applications such as cooling of thermal machines and micro-electronic components or cooling during a metallurgical fusion. It would also improve the prediction of geophysical motions in oceans and atmosphere. The use of rough surfaces is a way to enhance the heat flux. The interaction between the main shear flow and the rough surface creates secondary vortices that enhance the detachment of thermal plumes from the tip of the rough elements. In this work numerical simulations are conducted in a cylindrical cell heated from below and cooled from above in presence of rough surfaces. A comparison of Rayleigh versus Nusselt number scaling between rough surfaces and smooth ones shows enhanced heat fluxes. The flow is solved using a direct numerical simulation (DNS) of the three dimensional unsteady Navier Stokes equations with the Boussinesq approximation and an immersed boundary approach is used for the treatment of rough surfaces.