NUMERICAL COMPUTATION FOR THE STABILITY OF THE RAYLEIGH-BENARD THERMALLY DRIVEN FLOW

The stability of the Rayleigh-Benard thermally driven flow is numerically computed with an operator transformation and the continuation method. The contours of stream function, vorticity and temperature are drawn for different values of Ra when Pr = 1.0; and the critical Ra number at several Pr numbers is about 2740. The result agrees with the physics analysis, and is also reasonable as compared with three-dimensional experiment.