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Updated: May 14, 2026

Evolution of Staircase Structures in Diffusive Convection
Published on: September 5, 2018
Scaling behavior in turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection revealed by conditional structure functions
Emily S C Ching1, Yue-Kin Tsang, T N Fok
1Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. ching@phy.cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract:
We show that the nature of the scaling behavior can be revealed by studying the conditional structure functions evaluated at given values of the locally averaged thermal dissipation rate. These conditional structure functions have power-law dependence on the value of the locally averaged thermal dissipation rate, and such dependence for the Bolgiano-Obukhov scaling is different from the other scaling behaviors. Our analysis of experimental measurements verifies the power-law dependence and reveals the Bolgiano-Obukhov scaling behavior at the center of the bottom plate of the convection cell.
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