Subcritical convective instability Part 1. Fluid layers

Abstract

This paper elaborates on the assertion that energy methods provide an always mathematically rigorous and a sometimes physically precise theory of sub-critical convective instability. The general theory, without explicit solutions, is used to deduce that the critical Rayleigh number is a monotonically increasing function of the Nusselt number, that this increase is very slow if the Nusselt number is large, and that a fluid layer heated from below and internally is definitely stable when $RA < \widetilde{RA}(N_s) > 1708/(N_s + 1)$ where N_s is a heat source parameter and $\widetilde{RA}$ is a critical Rayleigh number. This last problem is also solved numerically and the result compared with linear theory. The critical Rayleigh numbers given by energy theory are slightly less than those given by linear theory, this difference increasing from zero with the magnitude of the heat-source intensity. To previous results proving the non-existence of subcritical instabilities in the absence of heat sources is appended this result giving a narrow band of Rayleigh numbers as possibilities for subcritical instabilities.