Rayleigh-Bénard convection of a supercritical fluid: PIV and heat transfer study

Fluids above the critical point are widely used in industry. Chemical, pharmaceutical, food industry and energy production are some examples. In the energy production sector they are mainly used as cooling fluids, because they allow to increase the thermal efficiency of the power plants. However, the fundamentals of their heat transfer behavior...

Long-term unsteadiness and large-scale structures in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with and without electromagnetic forcing

This dissertation focuses on turbulent thermal convection, which occurs in a wide range of (geo)physical situations, like in the atmosphere, the oceans, the interior of stars or planets, and engineering applications, like metal casting or crystal growth processes. In this work, a special type of thermal convection, Rayleigh-Bénard convection, is...