3.1. Instantaneous flow and heat transfer features

In figure 2, we show snapshots of isosurfaces of the $Q$ -criterion, coloured by the local temperature $T^*$ , and the corresponding video can be viewed in supplementary movie 1 available at https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2025.22. The $Q$ -criterion visualizes vortices where the magnitude of vorticity ${\boldsymbol{\Omega} }=[\nabla \mathbf {u}-(\nabla \mathbf {u})^T]/2$ exceeds the magnitude of the strain rate $\mathbf {S}=[\nabla \mathbf {u}+(\nabla \mathbf {u})^T]/2$ , making it an effective tool for illustrating vortical structures (Hunt, Wray & Moin Reference Hunt, Wray and Moin1988). At a higher modulation frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 2 a,c,e,g), the vortex structures are concentrated near the wall and appear relatively unchanged across different phase angles. At a lower modulation frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ (see figure 2 b,d,f,h), the effect of temporal modulation on wall temperature is evident, and the vortex structure exhibits a pronounced temporal evolution. Specifically, an increased number of structures are identified at $\phi = \pi /2$ and $\phi = \pi$ , carried by hot fluids. An interesting observation is that when the wall temperature modulation leads to a stable condition (see figure 2 h), the vortices near the bottom wall almost disappear. The absence of vortex interaction implies that the turbulent flow near the bottom wall is significantly weakened, although vortices still emerge and turbulent flow remains active on the top wall. The slower modulation frequency allows for the development of diverse flow structures and temperature distributions at each phase, indicating the fluid’s ability to adapt to each state of the heating and cooling cycles. In contrast, rapid modulation does not give the fluid enough time to significantly rearrange its structure within one modulation cycle, resulting in a consistent pattern regardless of the phase angle.

Figure 3.

Typical instantaneous velocity component $v^*$ at channel centre plane ( $y = h$ ) at phase angle (a,b) $\phi = 0$ , (c,d) $\phi = \pi /2$ , (e,f) $\phi = \pi$ , (g,h) $\phi = 3\pi /2$ , with frequency (a,c,e,g) $f^* = 1$ , (b,d,f,h) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

Figure 4.

Typical instantaneous temperature $T^*$ in cross-stream plane at phase angle (a,b) $\phi = 0$ , (c,d) $\phi = \pi /2$ , (e,f) $\phi = \pi$ , (g,h) $\phi = 3\pi /2$ , with frequency (a,c,e,g) $f^* = 1$ , (b,d,f,h) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

We show the instantaneous velocity component $v^{*}$ at the channel centre plane ( $y = h$ ) in figure 3, corresponding to the instantaneous state presented in figure 2. In convective flow, rising fluids are warmer, and falling fluids are colder; thus, we do not show the corresponding temperature field $T^*$ at this plane. However, we have verified that the correlation coefficient between $v^*$ and $T^*$ is larger than 0.47. At a Rayleigh number of $Ra = 10^7$ and a bulk Reynolds number of $Re_b \approx 5623$ , with a fixed Prandtl number of $Pr = 0.71$ , the corresponding Richardson number is $Ri_{b} = 0.45$ . At this intermediate Richardson number, the shear-driven and buoyancy-driven turbulence production rates are nearly balanced. The flow exhibits rolls pointing in the streamwise direction, with a strong meandering behaviour due to the wavy instability of the rolls. This overall trend is similar to that reported by Pirozzoli et al. (Reference Pirozzoli, Bernardini, Verzicco and Orlandi2017). In addition, we found that at a higher modulation frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 3 a,c,e,g), the pair of counter-rotating rolls within the flow domain remains relatively stable in strength. The stability of these rolls demonstrates the flow’s resilience against high-frequency thermal perturbations, suggesting an inherent inertia in the thermal field that resists rapid changes. However, at a lower modulation frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ (see figure 3 b,d,f,h), the strength of the roll varies with the phase angle. Specifically, the rolls are stronger during the heating phase ( $T_{{bottom}}\gt T_{{hot}}$ ); they are much weaker, or even disappear, during the cooling phase ( $T_{{bottom}}\lt T_{{hot}}$ ).

We show the temperature field $T^*$ in the cross-stream plane, which complements the velocity contours at the channel centre plane shown in figure 3, and the corresponding video can be viewed in supplementary movie 2. During the heating phase, we observe frequent hot plume emissions near the bottom wall, becoming more pronounced after the wall temperature cycle reaches its peak (see figure 4 e,f). In contrast, during the cooling phase (see figure 4 g,h), plume emissions from the bottom wall are absent due to stable stratification, resulting in the weakening of buoyancy forces. In this stable stratification, internal gravity waves separate the bottom cold part and the top hot part (Zonta et al. Reference Zonta, Sichani and Soldati2022). We also observe the effect of modulation frequency on temperature evolution. At a higher frequency of $f^* = 1$ , the upward- and downward-travelling plumes detaching from the boundary layers are almost unaffected by the phase angle, explaining the relatively stable pair of counter-rotating rolls found in figure 3(a,c,e,g). At a lower frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ , the slower frequency allows the temperature to respond to changes in the thermal boundaries and adapt to each state of the modulation cycle (see figure 4 b,d,f,h). During the heating phase, hot rising plumes deeply penetrate into the bulk region of the channel. During the cooling phase, a stably stratified layer forms near the bottom wall, acting as a thermal blanket. The overall behaviour mirrors the dynamics observed in atmospheric flow (Dupont & Patton Reference Dupont and Patton2022). After sunrise, the ground heats up, destabilizing atmospheric conditions and forming a mixed layer with a relatively uniform temperature profile due to turbulent mixing. After sunset, the ground cools down more rapidly than the air above it, forming a stable boundary layer close to the surface. This layer sits beneath the remnants of the daytime mixed layer, where turbulence gradually decays in the absence of additional production mechanisms.

Figure 5.

Typical instantaneous vertical convective heat flux $v^* \delta T^*$ at phase angle (a,b) $\phi$ = 0, (c,d) $\phi$ = $\pi$ /2, (e,f) $\phi$ = $\pi$ , (g,h) $\phi$ = 3 $\pi$ /2, with frequency (a,c,e,g) $f^* = 1$ , (b,d,f,h) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

To examine the influence of wall temperature modulation on local heat transfer properties, we show slices of vertical convective heat flux $v^*\delta T^*$ in figure 5, corresponding to the instantaneous state presented in figure 2. Here, the temperature fluctuation is defined as $\delta T^* = T^* - \langle T \rangle _{V,t}$ , and $\langle \cdots \rangle _{V,t}$ denotes the average over the whole channel and over the time. At a higher frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 5 a,c,e,g), positive values of vertical heat flux predominantly appear within the channel, while negative values occur near both the top and bottom walls. This counter-gradient heat transfer is attributed to sweeps of hotter fluid towards the bottom wall and colder fluid towards the top wall. In contrast, at a lower frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ (see figure 5 b,d,f,h), there is a strong counter-gradient heat flux in the bulk region of the channel, driven by the bulk dynamics of rolls, similar to the mechanism in RB convection (Gasteuil et al. Reference Gasteuil, Shew, Gibert, Chillà, Castaing and Pinton2007; Huang & Zhou Reference Huang and Zhou2013). Detached plumes move with the streamwise-oriented roll, and after reaching the opposite wall, some plumes retain thermal energy and remain hotter or colder than their surroundings. They continue moving with the rolls, resulting in the falling of hot fluid or the rising of cold fluid, thus generating negative vertical heat flux.

We further show the instantaneous streamwise velocity component $u^*$ at a near-wall station of $y = 0.05 h$ in figure 6. At a higher modulation frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 6 a,c,e,g), near-wall streaks are observed even in the presence of strong buoyancy. These streaks are often associated with vigorous momentum transfer and robust turbulence production. However, at a lower modulation frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ (see figure 6 b,d,f,h), during the cooling phase, which leads to stable stratification of the fluid, the near-wall burst-sweep process is completely disrupted (see figure 6 h). This disruption ceases turbulence production and shows tendencies of relaminarization near the bottom wall. During the heating phase, which leads to unstable stratification, the near-wall streaks appear again.

Figure 6.

Typical instantaneous velocity component $u^*$ at near-wall station ( $y = 0.05 h$ ) at phase angle (a,b) $\phi = 0$ , (c,d) $\phi = \pi /2$ , (e,f) $\phi = \pi$ , (g,h) $\phi = 3\pi /2$ , with frequency (a,c,e,g) $f^* = 1$ , (b,d,f,h) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

Figure 7.

(a–c) The second most energetic POD modes, visualizations of isosurfaces of vertical velocity $v$ (red colour represents $v\gt 0$ and blue colour represents $v\lt 0$ ), and (d–f) the cross-correlation functions between bottom wall temperature $T_{{bottom}}(t)$ and POD mode amplitudes $a_2(t)$ as a function of dimensionless lag time $\tau /T_{{period}}$ , at modulation frequency of (a,d) $f^* = 1$ , (b,e) $f^* = 0.1$ , (c,f) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

To extract the large-scale coherent flow structures, we perform proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) on the turbulent dataset (Berkooz, Holmes & Lumley Reference Berkooz, Holmes and Lumley1993). The POD has been widely employed to study the dynamics of large-scale circulation in convection cells (Podvin & Sergent Reference Podvin and Sergent2015; Castillo-Castellanos et al. Reference Castillo-Castellanos, Sergent, Podvin and Rossi2019; Soucasse et al. Reference Soucasse, Podvin, Rivière and Soufiani2019; Xu, Chen & Xi Reference Xu, Chen and Xi2021). Specifically, the spatiotemporal flow velocity field $\mathbf {u}(\textbf {x}, t)$ is decomposed into a superposition of empirical orthogonal eigenfunctions $\mathbf {\phi }_i(\mathbf {x})$ and their scalar amplitudes $a_i(t)$ as

(3.1) \begin{equation} \mathbf {u}(\mathbf {x},t)=\sum _{i=1}^\infty a_i(t) \mathbf {\phi }_i(\mathbf {x}). \end{equation}

Here, $\mathbf {u}(\mathbf {x},t)=[u(\mathbf {x},t), v(\mathbf {x},t), w(\mathbf {x},t)]^T$ represents the vector field with components $u$ , $v$ and $w$ , $\mathbf {\phi }_{i}(\mathbf {x})=[\phi _{i}^{u}(\mathbf {x}), \phi _{i}^{v}(\mathbf {x}), \phi _{i}^{w}(\mathbf {x})]^T$ represents the spatial eigenfunctions (i.e. the POD modes) and $a_{i}(t)$ are the temporal coefficients representing the time-dependent amplitudes of the corresponding modes. We used at least 900 snapshots to adequately capture the flow structure, ensuring the dominant modes are representative. At parameters of $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ (i.e. the corresponding $Ri_{b}=0.445$ ), we have that the most energetic POD mode corresponds to the streamwise unidirectional shear flow with parallel streamlines pointing along the $x$ direction. Then, in figure 7(a–c), we present the second most energetic POD modes, which are essentially the dominant mode for the fluctuation velocity field. Regardless of the temporal modulation frequency of the bottom wall temperature, streamwise-oriented rolls that fill the whole channel height are observed. We also examined the time series of mode amplitudes $a_i(t)$ and studied the relationship between wall temperature $T_{{bottom}} (t )=T_{{hot}}+2(T_{{hot}}-T_{{cold}})\sin (2\pi ft)$ and the second POD mode amplitude $a_2(t)$ by calculating their cross-correlation functions as

(3.2) \begin{equation} R_{T_{{bottom}},a_2}\left (\tau \right )=\frac {\left \langle \left [T_{{bottom}}\left (t+\tau \right )-\left \langle T_{{bottom}}\right \rangle \right ]\left [ a_2(t)-\left \langle a_2 \right \rangle \right ]\right \rangle }{\sigma _{T_{{bottom}}}\sigma _{a_2}}, \end{equation}

where $\sigma _{T_{{bottom}}}$ and $\sigma _{a_2}$ are the standard deviation of $T_{{bottom}}$ and $a_2$ , respectively. As shown in figure 7(d–f), at higher modulation frequency of $f^* = 1$ and $f^* = 0.1$ , $T_{{bottom}}$ are uncorrelated with $a_2$ , indicating that the large-scale rolls are not influenced by changes in wall temperature. However, at a lower modulation frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ , we observe a strong correlation between $T_{{bottom}}$ and $a_2$ , implying that the strength of the large-scale rolls is significantly affected by temperature modulation on the wall. These large-scale rolls are a recognized structural characteristic of atmospheric boundary layers, present in scenarios with mean streamwise flow and exhibiting overall streamwise helical patterns. These patterns are responsible for transporting warmer air towards the capping inversion and cooler air towards the ground (Jayaraman & Brasseur Reference Jayaraman and Brasseur2021).

We then computed the energy content of the $i$ th POD mode $\lambda _i$ . In figure 8, we show the spectra of $\lambda _i$ , where each value of $\lambda _i$ is normalized by the total energy $\sum \lambda _{i}$ . At $Ra = 10^{7}$ , the energy content of the first POD mode $\lambda _1$ dominates, accounting for over 95 % of the total energy and representing the mean flow (streamwise unidirectional shear flow). The energy content of the second and third POD modes $\lambda _2$ and $\lambda _3$ each contributes approximately 0.1 %–0.6 % of the total energy. At a higher Rayleigh number of $Ra=10^8$ , with the same bulk Reynolds number of $Re_b \approx 5623$ , the energy contained in the first mode reduces to approximately 80 % due to the enhanced effect of buoyancy, while the second and third modes each contribute around 2 % of the total energy. These results indicate that both the second and third modes play a role in capturing the flow dynamics.

Figure 8.

The energy contained in each mode, for (a) $Ra = 10^{7}$ and (b) $Ra = 10^{8}$ .

Due to the periodicity in the wall boundary conditions, the streamwise-oriented rolls are non-stationary and continually move along the spanwise direction. To illustrate this, we quantitatively describe the movement of the rolls by tracking their centre. Because the axes of these rolls align with the streamwise direction and do not exhibit the complex motion seen in RB convection (Vogt et al. Reference Vogt, Horn, Grannan and Aurnou2018; Li et al. Reference Li, Chen, Xu and Xi2022; Teimurazov et al. Reference Teimurazov, Singh, Su, Eckert, Shishkina and Vogt2023), we can track their edges by identifying locations where the vertical velocity component is minimal or maximal. The centre of each roll is then determined by calculating the arithmetic mean of these points. The POD analysis reveals that not only the second most energetic POD modes but also higher POD modes can represent these rolls. For example, at $Ra = 10^7$ , $Re_b \approx 5623$ and $f^* = 0.1$ , both the second and third POD modes correspond to streamwise-oriented rolls, albeit offset along the spanwise direction. Thus, we use both the second and third POD modes to recover the streamwise-oriented roll at $f^* = 0.1$ . Figure 9(a) shows the instantaneous recovered flow field at $x = L/2$ , representing a pair of counter-rotating streamwise-oriented rolls. Here, we mark the edges and centre of one roll to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in tracking the roll motion. When the roll centre exits one side of the domain, we account for the domain’s periodicity by wrapping its position to the opposite side, resulting in a continuous trajectory. In figure 9(b), we plot the time series of the centre of this roll along the spanwise direction. The results suggest that the streamwise-oriented roll moves along the spanwise direction, occasionally appearing to exit from one side of the domain and re-enter from the other.

Figure 9.

(a) Typical instantaneous flow field recovered using the second and third POD modes at $Ra=10^{7}$ , $Re_{b} \approx 5623$ and $f^*=0.1$ . The contour represents the vertical velocity component, and the arrow represents the velocity field of recovered velocity components. The magenta diamonds mark the edges of the rolls and the blue circles mark the roll centre. (b) The time series of the position of the roll centre.

A smaller domain may restrict the formation of large structures due to the imposed periodic boundary conditions and limited spatial extent (Stevens et al. Reference Stevens, Hartmann, Verzicco and Lohse2024); thus we conducted additional simulations in a larger domain ( $4\pi h \times 2h \times 2 \pi h$ ). In this expanded domain, at $Ra=10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ (i.e. the corresponding $Ri_b=0.445$ ), we observed two pairs of counter-rotating straight rolls (see figure 10 a), which align with expectations based on domain scaling. In other words, doubling the horizontal extent resulted in two roll pairs, compared with one pair in the smaller domain. We then examined the second POD modes in this large domain at $Ra=10^8$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ (i.e. the corresponding $Ri_b=4.45$ ). As shown in figure 10(b), the isosurfaces reveal variations in the vertical velocity, with alternating regions of upward (positive) and downward (negative) flow. The higher Rayleigh number induces stronger buoyancy forces and increased thermal driving, which leads to the breakdown of coherent rolls into smaller, more chaotic structures. While these structures remain somewhat aligned in the streamwise direction, they appear increasingly fragmented, indicating a transition towards a more convection-dominated state. Accordingly, we refer to these structures at $Ra = 10^8$ as fragmented streamwise-oriented rolls.

Figure 10.

The second POD mode in a domain size of $4\pi h \times 2 h \times 2 \pi h$ , visualizations of isosurfaces of vertical velocity (red colour represents $v\gt 0$ and blue colour represents $v\lt 0$ ) at (a) $Ra = 10^{7}$ , (b) $Ra = 10^{8}$ , with $f^* = 0.1$ .

3.2. Long-time-averaged statistics

Figure 11.

(a) Friction coefficient, (b) values of $C_f/C_{f0}-1$ , (c) Nusselt number and (d) values of $Nu/Nu_0-1$ , as functions of $f^*$ for various $Ra$ . Here, $C_{f0}$ and $Nu_0$ are the friction coefficient and Nusselt numbers without wall temperature modulation, respectively.

To study changes induced on the mean flow and temperature by the wall temperature modulation, we now focus on the long-time-averaged statistics. In figure 11, we present statistics of aerodynamic drag and heat transfer as a function of modulation frequency for various Rayleigh numbers, which is a topic of interest in meteorology and engineering (Yerragolam et al. Reference Yerragolam, Verzicco, Lohse and Stevens2022, Reference Yerragolam, Howland, Stevens, Verzicco, Shishkina and Lohse2024). In figure 11(a), we examine the aerodynamic drag in terms of friction coefficients ( $C_f$ ) at the bottom wall, which is calculated as $C_f=2\langle \tau _w \rangle /(\rho u_b^2)$ . The increased drag due to the emission of plumes in thermal field is consistent with that reported by Scagliarini et al. (Reference Scagliarini, Einarsson, Gylfason and Toschi2015), Pirozzoli et al. (Reference Pirozzoli, Bernardini, Verzicco and Orlandi2017) and Howland et al. (Reference Howland, Yerragolam, Verzicco and Lohse2024). With wall temperature modulation, we observe that aerodynamic drag is not very sensitive to the wall temperature modulation frequency. Figure 11(b) further visualizes the relative changes of $C_f$ with wall temperature modulation, showing that the variation in $C_f$ is less than 15 %. In figure 11(c), we examine the heat transfer efficiency in terms of the Nusselt number ( $Nu$ ), which is calculated as $Nu=\sqrt {RaPr/Ri_{b}} \langle v^* T^* \rangle _{V,t}+1$ . The $Nu$ at the highest modulation frequency is the same as that without wall temperature modulation. With the decrease in modulation frequency, we observe enhanced heat transfer efficiency for all Rayleigh numbers. Previously, in pure RB convection, Yang et al. (Reference Yang, Chong, Wang, Verzicco, Shishkina and Lohse2020) reported a regime where the modulation is too fast to affect $Nu$ , a regime where $Nu$ increases with decreasing $f^*$ and a regime where $Nu$ decreases with further decreasing $f^*$ . Our results in mixed PRB convection cover the first two regimes reported in pure RB convection, yet we did not further explore slower frequency due to the high computational cost in the 3-D simulation. Figure 11(d) further visualizes that among the three Rayleigh numbers, $Ra = 10^8$ results in the largest magnitude of heat transfer efficiency, up to 96 %. At high Rayleigh numbers, convective patterns are more vigorous, and wall temperature modulation has a more disruptive effect. Higher frequencies likely cause more frequent disturbances in the boundary layers, reducing heat transfer efficiency by breaking up coherent thermal plumes.

Figure 12.

Mean profiles of (a–c) streamwise velocity and (d–f) temperature (a,d) along the whole channel height, (b,e) along the bottom half-height and (c,f) along the top half-height, for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

In figure 12, we show the mean profiles for streamwise velocity and temperature across the channel height to illustrate the effects of wall temperature modulation on the mean flow. We denote the mean velocity and mean temperature by an overbar, and the fluctuating quantities by a prime; thus we have $u=\overline {u}+u'$ and $T=\overline {T}+T'$ . Consistent with our observations on flow organization, these mean profiles are similar between scenarios without wall temperature modulation and those with the highest modulation frequency ( $f^* = 1$ ). For the mean streamwise velocity profile, it is symmetric about the midplane $y = h$ at the highest frequency of $f^* = 1$ ; however, slight asymmetry is observed at lower frequencies of $f^* = 0.1$ and 0.01 (see figure 12 a). This asymmetry is also evident from table 1, which shows the relative differences in friction Reynolds numbers. To highlight the modulation effect in the near-wall regions, we replot the velocity data using wall scaling in figures 12(b) and 12(c). Here, the superscript ’+’ indicates normalization using the kinematic viscosity $\nu$ and the friction velocity $u_{\tau }$ in wall units. The distances from the walls are then given by $y^+=yu_{\tau }/\nu$ . We can see that at lower frequencies, the average streamwise velocity $\overline {u}^{+}=\overline {u}/u_{\tau }$ decreases near the bottom wall (see figure 12 b) and increases near the top wall (see figure 12 c). As for the mean temperature profile, at $f^* = 1$ , the temperature decreases monotonically from the bottom wall, stabilizing at a constant value of the arithmetic mean temperature $T^* = 0.5$ in the bulk region, and is antisymmetric about the midplane (see figure 12 d). This pattern recovers the canonical RB convection profile. However, at $f^* = 0.1$ and 0.01, deviations from the profiles without wall modulation are evident. The temperature first decreases and then increases near the bottom wall, until it reaches a plateau in the bulk region. Similar to findings in RB convection (Yang et al. Reference Yang, Chong, Wang, Verzicco, Shishkina and Lohse2020), our results suggest that at lower modulation frequencies, the bulk temperature increases compared with cases without wall temperature modulation. We also replot the temperature data using wall scaling, as shown in figures 12(e) and 12( $f$ ). For a straightforward comparison between the heating and cooling sides, we calculate the average temperature as $\overline {T}^{+}= |\overline {T}-\langle T_{{wall}}\rangle |/T_{\tau }$ . Here, $\langle T_{{wall}}\rangle$ is the mean temperature at either the bottom wall or top wall, and the friction temperature $T_{\tau } = Q/u_{\tau }$ is used to normalize the average temperature, where $Q$ is total vertical heat flux, calculated as $Q = (\alpha \Delta _{T}/H) Nu$ . At $f^* = 0.1$ and 0.01, we observe a peak in the $\overline {T}^{+}$ profile at $y^+ \approx 17$ (see figure 12 e) due to the formation of thermal Stokes layers by the oscillatory wall temperature (Yang et al. Reference Yang, Chong, Wang, Verzicco, Shishkina and Lohse2020); however, such a peak is absent at a higher frequency of $f^* = 1$ , as well as near the top wall where the wall temperature is constant (see figure 12 $f$ ).

To examine the influence of wall temperature modulation on turbulence quantities, in figure 13, we present the root-mean-square (r.m.s.) fluctuation of velocity components and temperature along the lower half-height of the channel. The peak of the r.m.s. streamwise velocity profile consistently occurs at $y^+\approx 15$ (see figure 13 a), where turbulent eddies are most active, similar to observations in turbulent channel flow without convection (Moser, Kim & Mansour Reference Moser, Kim and Mansour1999). The wall-normal velocity fluctuation increases throughout the half-channel height due to wall temperature modulation, becoming comparable to or even larger than the streamwise component (see figure 13 b). These fluctuations, sensitive to buoyancy effects, suggest that lower-frequency thermal modulations enhance buoyancy-driven turbulence. The spanwise velocity fluctuation also increases in the near-wall region with wall temperature modulation (see figure 13 c). This increase in wall-normal and spanwise velocity fluctuation implies that fluid columns rising from the bottom wall activate cross-stream eddies near the wall. As for the r.m.s. of the temperature (see figure 13 d), lower-frequency wall temperature modulations ( $f^* = 0.01$ ) yield higher peaks in temperature fluctuations near the wall, indicating a more unstable thermal boundary layer with larger eddies under slower temperature modulation. In contrast, higher frequencies ( $f^* = 1$ ) appear to stabilize the thermal boundary layer, leading to less pronounced temperature fluctuations.

Figure 13.

The r.m.s. fluctuation of (a) streamwise velocity, (b) wall-normal velocity, (c) spanwise velocity and (d) temperature along the bottom half-height of the channel, for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

Figure 14.

Profile of (a) total shear stress, (b) percentage of Reynolds stress to the total shear stress, (c) convective term component $\overline{v}^*\partial \overline{u}^*/\partial y^{*}$ and (d) convective term component $ \overline{w}^*\partial\overline{u}^*/\partial z^{*}$ along the channel half-height, for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

Wall temperature modulation also influences the wall-normal behaviour of momentum flux. Because the mean flow is predominantly in the axial direction for our investigated flow parameters, we plot the distribution of shear stress $\tau (y)=\rho \nu {\rm d}\overline {u}/{\rm d}y-\overline {u^{\prime }v^{\prime }}$ in terms of dimensionless function $\tau ^* / \tau _w^*$ across the lower-half of the channel height (from $y=0$ to $y=h$ ) in figure 14(a), where $\tau _w^*$ is the dimensionless wall shear stress. In figure 14(b), we further show the contribution of Reynolds stress $-\overline {u^{\prime *}v^{\prime *}}$ to the total shear stress $\tau ^*$ . At a higher frequency of $f^* = 1$ , the total shear stress exhibits a nonlinear distribution, whereas at lower frequencies of $f^* = 0.1$ and $f^* = 0.01$ , it decreases linearly along the channel’s half-height. The linear distribution of $\tau ^*/\tau _w^*$ at lower frequencies resembles the shear stress profile observed in a pure turbulent channel without convection. To further explain the deviation from linear total shear stress at higher frequencies, we examine the mean-momentum equation along the streamwise direction within the mixed convection channel:

(3.3) \begin{align} \overline {u}^*\frac {\partial \bar {u}^*}{\partial x^*} +\overline {v}^*\frac {\partial \bar {u}^*}{\partial y^*} +\overline {w}^*\frac {\partial \bar {u}^*}{\partial z^*} & =-\frac {\partial \overline {P}^*}{\partial x^*} +\frac {1}{Re_{b}} \left (\frac {\partial ^2\overline {u}^*}{\partial x^{*2}} +\frac {\partial ^2\overline {u}^*}{\partial y^{*2}} +\frac {\partial ^2\overline {u}^*}{\partial z^{*2}}\right )\nonumber \\ & \quad -\left (\frac {\partial \overline {u^{\prime *}u^{\prime *}}}{\partial x^*} +\frac {\partial \overline {u^{\prime *}v^{\prime *}}}{\partial y^*} +\frac {\partial \overline {u^{\prime *}w^{\prime *}}}{\partial z^*}\right ) +\overline {f_b}^* . \end{align}

Here, the terms for $\partial (\cdot )/\partial x^*$ and $ \partial ^2(\cdot )/\partial x^{*2}$ are near zero in the fully developed region, where velocity statistics no longer vary with the streamwise direction, as confirmed by our DNS results. Due to the detachment of thermal plumes from the wall and their horizontal spreading, the homogeneous condition along the spanwise direction may be violated, making the terms $ \partial (\cdot )/\partial z^*$ and $ \partial ^2(\cdot )/\partial z^{*2}$ non-zero near the wall. However, we numerically verified (not shown here for simplicity) that the magnitudes of $(1/Re_b)\partial ^2\overline {u}^*/\partial z^{*2}$ and $\partial \overline {u^{\prime *}w^{\prime *}}/\partial z^*$ are three orders smaller than the other terms, so they can be neglected. Thus, (3.3) can be rewritten as

(3.4) \begin{equation} \frac {\partial }{\partial y^*}\left (\frac {1}{Re_b}\frac {\partial \overline {u}^*}{\partial y^*}-\overline {u^{\prime *}v^{\prime *}}\right ) =\overline {v}^*\frac {\partial \overline {u}^*}{\partial y^*}+\overline {w}^*\frac {\partial \overline {u}^*}{\partial z^*}-\overline {f_b}^* \ \ \Rightarrow \ \ \frac {{\rm d}\tau ^*}{{\rm d}y^*}=\overline {v}^*\frac {\partial \overline {u}^*}{\partial y^*}+\overline {w}^*\frac {\partial \overline {u}^*}{\partial z^*}-\overline {f_b}^* .\end{equation}

At a higher frequency of $f^* = 1$ , the convection effects are more pronounced for the mean flow, resulting in finite values for the components $\overline {v}^*\partial \overline {u}^*/\partial y^*$ and $ \overline {w}^*\partial \overline {u}^*/\partial z^*$ , as shown in figures 14(c) and 14(d). At lower frequencies of $f^* = 0.1$ and $0.01$ , the convection effects are substantially reduced for the mean flow, making $ \overline {v}^*\partial \overline {u}^*/\partial y^*$ and $\overline {w}^*\partial \overline {u}^*/\partial z^*$ close to zero, restoring conditions similar to those for a pure turbulent channel. This reduced convection for the mean flow is mainly attributed to the formation of a stably stratified layer near the bottom wall, which acts as a thermal blanket, effectively suppressing buoyancy forces.

Figure 15.

Profiles of (a,b) flux Richardson number and (c,d) turbulent Prandtl number, along (a,c) the bottom half-channel and (b,d) the top half-channel, respectively, for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

We quantify the local relative dynamic importance of buoyancy compared with friction using the flux Richardson number, which is calculated as (Pirozzoli et al. Reference Pirozzoli, Bernardini, Verzicco and Orlandi2017)

(3.5) \begin{equation} Ri_f=\frac {-\beta g\overline {\nu ^{\prime }T^{\prime }}}{\overline {u^{\prime }\nu ^{\prime }}{\rm d}\bar {u}/{\rm d}y}. \end{equation}

In figures 15(a) and 15(b), we plot $Ri_f$ along the bottom and top halves of the channel height, respectively. Regardless of the wall modulation frequency, the near-wall region ( $y \leqslant 0.2h$ ) is dominated by shear. However, as we move farther away from the wall, convection begins to emerge and eventually dominates in the bulk region. We also quantify the ratio of turbulent momentum to thermal diffusivity via the turbulent Prandtl number $Pr_t$ , which is frequently used in modelling turbulent heat transfer. For simple shear flows, the Reynolds analogy suggests that $Pr_t$ is of the order of unity (Kays Reference Kays1994). Using DNS results, we can calculate $Pr_t$ as

(3.6) \begin{equation} Pr_t=\frac {\nu _t}{\alpha _t}=\frac {\overline {u'v'}}{\overline {v'T'}}\frac {{\rm d}\overline {T}/{\rm d}y}{{\rm d}\overline {u}/{\rm d}y}. \end{equation}

Here, $\nu _t$ is turbulent viscosity and $\alpha _t$ is the thermal eddy diffusivity. On the bottom side (see figure 15 c), at a high frequency of $f^* = 1$ and the unmodulated case, $Pr_t$ is close to unity in the near-wall region; however, at lower modulation frequencies, $Pr_t$ deviates from unity significantly because the temperature is more efficiently transported compared with momentum. On the top side (see figure 15 d), $Pr_t$ approximates unity near the wall, yet it exhibits a large variation in the bulk region. These features of the $Pr_t$ distribution present challenges in turbulence modelling, where a constant value is often assumed.

3.3. Phase-averaged statistics

Figure 16.

Phase-averaged streamwise velocity profiles $\langle u^{+}(y^{+})\rangle _\phi$ along the bottom half-height for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ . For the case without wall temperature modulation, we present the long-time-averaged profiles to guide the eye.

Because the wall temperature modulation inherently induces unsteady flow and temperature evolution, we now focus on the phase-averaged statistics. We present the variability of the physical quantities during different phases of the flow cycle and how they are affected by the wall temperature modulation. In the following, we denote with angle brackets $ \langle \cdot \rangle$ all quantities that have been phase-averaged. We first calculate the phase-averaged streamwise velocity $\langle u^{+}(\mathbf {x})\rangle _\phi$ and plot its profile $\langle u^{+}(y^{+})\rangle _\phi = [\int _0^{L}\int _0^{W}\langle u^{+} (\mathbf {x} )\rangle _\phi {\rm d}z{\rm d}x ]/ (LW )$ along the bottom-half of the channel height, as shown in figure 16. At a high frequency of $f^* = 1$ , the flow maintains a velocity profile consistent with that under constant wall temperature. However, at a lower frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ , the velocity profiles deviate from those without wall temperature modulation, particularly in the near-wall region where the thermal boundary layer causes variations in the velocity gradients. An interesting observation is that during the cooling phase (e.g. at a phase angle of $\phi = 5\pi /4, 3\pi /2, 7\pi /4$ ), the streamwise velocity near the wall significantly decreases. This occurs because the turbulence intensity near the bottom wall is greatly weakened by the cooling. As a result, the reduced turbulence results in lower surface drag on the fluid above, leading to an acceleration of the flow and a higher plateau away from the wall compared with the constant wall temperature condition. This trend aligns with the dynamics of the nocturnal low-level jet in atmospheric flow. At night, surface cooling creates stable conditions and temperature inversions, which suppress turbulence near the ground. This suppression reduces surface drag and allows for the formation of nocturnal jets characterized by higher wind speeds above the cooled surface layer. Understanding the behaviour of nocturnal jets is crucial for sandstorms, air pollution, wind energy utilization and aviation safety (Liu et al. Reference Liu, He, Wang and Zhang2014).

Figure 17.

Space-phase diagrams of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) along the bottom half-height for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ : (a) $f^* = 1$ and (b) $f^* = 0.01$ .

The behaviour of velocity distribution can be further understood by studying the phase-averaged TKE as $k^+=\langle {u_i^{\prime +}u_i^{\prime +}}\rangle _{\phi }/2$ . Here, the subscript $i$ is a dummy index, and the superscript ( $^\prime$ ) denotes the fluctuation part of an instantaneous flow variable. In figure 17, we show the space-phase diagram of turbulence intensities. At a high frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 17 a), we can infer that the perturbation is relatively intense in the region $10 \leqslant y^+\leqslant 40$ across different phases, and such consistent TKE leads to phase-averaged velocity profiles that are insensitive to phase variations. At a low frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ (see figure 17 b), there is phase-dependent variation in TKE diagrams, and turbulence intensity is strengthened and reduced alternately in one cycle. During heating phases, the flow behaves as unstable stratification, and TKE exhibits significant peaks in the range of $ y^+ \geqslant 10$ ; during cooling phases, the flow behaves similarly to stable stratification, TKE decreases to almost zero and turbulence intensities are suppressed. Such reduced TKE results in lower velocity close to the wall and higher velocity aloft, as previously observed in figure 16. We examine the phase-averaged TKE equation of incompressible mixed convection, which is written as

(3.7) \begin{equation} \begin{aligned} \frac {\partial k^+}{\partial t^+} + \langle u_j^+ \rangle _\phi \partial _{j^+} k^+ &= \underbrace {-\langle u_i^{\prime +} u_j^{\prime +} \rangle _\phi \partial _{j^+} \langle u_i^+ \rangle _\phi }_{\langle P \rangle } \\ &\quad \underbrace {- \partial _{j^+}\langle P^{\prime +} u_j^{\prime +} \rangle _\phi }_{\langle \Pi \rangle } \underbrace {- \frac {1}{2}\partial _{j^+} \langle u_i^{\prime +} u_i^{\prime +} u_j^{\prime +} \rangle _\phi }_{\langle T \rangle } + \underbrace {\partial _{j^+}\partial _{j^+} k^+}_{\langle D \rangle } \\ &\quad \underbrace {- \langle (\partial _{j^+} u_i^{\prime +})^2 \rangle _\phi }_{\langle \varepsilon \rangle } + \underbrace {\frac {Ra}{Pr(2Re_\tau )^3}\langle T^{\prime *} v^{\prime +} \rangle _\phi }_{\langle B \rangle }. \end{aligned} \end{equation}

In the above, the terms $\langle P \rangle$ and $\langle B \rangle$ represent the production by shear and buoyancy, respectively; the terms $\langle \Pi \rangle$ , $\langle T \rangle$ and $\langle D \rangle$ represent turbulent diffusion by pressure–velocity fluctuations, velocity fluctuations and viscous diffusion, respectively; and the term $\langle \varepsilon \rangle$ represents dissipation. In figure 18, we show the TKE budgets for $Ra = 10^7$ , $Re_b \approx 5623$ and $f^* = 0.01$ . The shear-induced and buoyancy-induced TKE productions are strongly influenced by the wall temperature modulation in both amplitude and peak position. Specifically, during the heating phase (e.g. at a phase angle of $\phi = \pi /4, \pi /2, 3\pi /4$ ), the TKE production is dominated by shear in the near-wall region, while it is dominated by buoyancy in the bulk region. During the cooling phase (e.g. at a phase angle of $\phi = 5\pi /4, 3\pi /2, 7\pi /4$ ), the TKE productions are all near zero along the whole channel height. For other terms of the budget, including the velocity–pressure gradient, the viscous diffusion and the turbulent transport, the in-cycle variation is also evident during the heating phase in the near-wall region but shows minor variation during the cooling phase (see the insets in figure 18).

Figure 18.

Phase-averaged TKE budgets along the bottom half-height for $Ra = 10^7$ , $Re_b \approx 5623$ and $f^* = 0.01$ .

We then analyse the phase-averaged temperature $ \langle T^* (\mathbf {x} ) \rangle _{\phi }$ , and plot its profile $ \langle T^*(y^*)\rangle_\phi = [\int _0^{L}\int _0^{W} \langle T^* (\mathbf {x} ) \rangle _\phi {\rm d}z{\rm d}x ]/ (LW )$ along the bottom half-channel height, as shown in figure 19. At a high frequency of $f^* = 1$ , the temperature profiles deviate from those without wall temperature modulation only in the region of $y \lt 0.1h$ . Farther away from the wall, the influence of the modulation is limited. At a lower frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ , both the near-wall and bulk temperatures are influenced by the modulation. During the heating phase (e.g. at a phase angle of $\phi = \pi /4, \pi /2, 3\pi /4$ ), the temperature decreases upward in the boundary layer, resulting in an unstably stratified flow. During the cooling phase (e.g. at a phase angle of $\phi = 5\pi /4, 3\pi /2, 7\pi /4$ ), the temperature increases upward in the boundary layer, forming a statistically stable boundary layer. This stabilization suppresses turbulence and reduces mixing, leading to the formation of a residual layer above the stable boundary layer that retains the thermal stratification from the previous cycle. In meteorology, this residual layer is analogous to the one that retains the adiabatic lapse rate from the previous day, as described by Stull (Reference Stull2015).

Figure 19.

Phase-averaged temperature profiles $\left\langle T^*(y^*)\right\rangle_\phi$ along the bottom half-channel height for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ .

Heat accumulates within the boundary layer during the heating phase and is lost during the cooling phase, making temperature profiles dependent on the accumulated heating or cooling. In figure 20, we plot the phase-averaged dimensionless heat flux, represented by the Nusselt number at the bottom wall as $Nu_{{bottom}}=-\langle \partial T^* / \partial y^* \rangle _{{bottom}, t}$ . Here, $\langle \cdots \rangle _{{bottom}, t}$ denotes the ensemble average over the bottom wall and over the time. At a high frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 20 a), the phase-averaged $Nu_{{bottom}}$ exhibits substantial oscillation amplitude. This occurs because high modulation frequency causes rapid changes in thermal conditions, temporarily enhancing convective heat transfer. However, significant peaks and valleys may require robust control mechanisms to manage these rapid changes without causing fatigue due to thermal stress, thereby adding complexity to the system device components in applied thermal engineering applications. As the modulation frequency decreases (see figures 20 b and 20 c), the oscillation amplitude of $Nu_{{bottom}}$ decreases, indicating more stable heat transfer with smaller deviations from the baseline. This is ideal for applications requiring consistent thermal management without significant fluctuations. On the other hand, the long-time-averaged values of Nusselt numbers generally increase as the modulation frequency decreases: $Nu$ is 11.58 at $f^* = 1$ while $Nu$ is 20.36 at $f^* = 0.01$ (marked by the dashed lines in figure 20). These results suggest that the average $Nu$ might not fully capture the extreme fluctuations, which are critical for predicting and optimizing heat transfer in various engineering applications.

Figure 20.

Phase-averaged dimensionless heat flux in terms of Nusselt number at the bottom wall at (a) $f^* = 1$ , (b) $f^* = 0.1$ and (c) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ . The dashed lines represent long-time-averaged values of $Nu$ at various modulation frequencies.

In addition, we observe the asymmetry in the Nusselt number $Nu_{{bottom}}$ during the heating and cooling phases at low modulation frequencies. At low frequencies (e.g. $f^* = 0.01$ ), the system experiences extended periods of heating and cooling, allowing distinct thermal and flow structures to develop in each phase. The fluid’s thermal inertia causes a delayed response in heat transfer: while the heating phase rapidly amplifies convection, the cooling phase is moderated by the residual thermal energy in the fluid. Specifically, during the heating phase, as the bottom wall temperature increases and buoyancy forces enhance, the upward convective currents accelerate rapidly. The increasing temperature gradient thins the thermal boundary layer, reducing thermal resistance and enhancing heat transfer efficiency. As a result, $Nu_{{bottom}}$ rises quickly, forming higher but narrower peaks above the average value. During the cooling phase, as the bottom wall temperature decreases and buoyancy forces weaken, the established convective motions persist due to the fluid’s inertia. The decreasing temperature gradient thickens the thermal boundary layer, increasing thermal resistance and slowing down heat transfer. This results in a more gradual reduction in $Nu_{{bottom}}$ , producing lower but wider regions below the average value.

Figure 21.

Comparison of oscillatory temperature from analytical and numerical solutions, at (a) $f^* = 1$ , (b) $f^* = 0.1$ and (c) $f^* = 0.01$ , for $Ra = 10^7$ and $Re_b \approx 5623$ . The grey dashed lines show the depth where the oscillating temperature’s amplitude drops to 1 % of its maximum value, and the black dash–dotted lines show the thermal boundary layer thickness.

Finally, we differentiate between the oscillatory flow induced by wall temperature modulation and the fluctuating fields. To that end, we adopt the phase decomposition method, which has been widely applied in the investigation of turbulent flows subjected to periodic forcing, such as channel turbulence or turbulent boundary layers with oscillating walls (Choi Reference Choi2002; Ricco et al. Reference Ricco, Ottonelli, Hasegawa and Quadrio2012; Ebadi et al. Reference Ebadi, White, Pond and Dubief2019), oscillatory or pulsating pipe flows (Manna et al. Reference Manna, Vacca and Verzicco2015; Jelly et al. Reference Jelly, Chin, Illingworth, Monty, Marusic and Ooi2020) and oscillatory thermal turbulence (Wu et al. Reference Wu, Dong, Wang and Zhou2021, Reference Wu, Wang and Zhou2022). The key idea of the phase decomposition method is to split the instantaneous field $\mathbb {F}{ (\mathbf {x},t )}$ into the long-time-averaged quantity $\overline {\mathbb {F}}(\mathbf {x})$ , the oscillatory quantity $ \tilde {\mathbb {F}}{ (\mathbf {x},t_n )}$ and the turbulent fluctuation $\mathbb {F}^{\prime }(\mathbf {x},t)$ , which is written as

(3.8) \begin{equation} \mathbb {F}(\mathbf {x},t)=\overline {\mathbb {F}}(\mathbf {x})+\overset {\sim }{\operatorname *{\mathbb {F}}}(\mathbf {x},t_n)+\mathbb {F}^{\prime }(\mathbf {x},t) .\end{equation}

Here, the oscillatory quantity is calculated as $\widetilde {\mathbb {F}}(\mathbf {x},t_n)= \langle \mathbb {F}(\mathbf {x}) \rangle _\phi -\overline {\mathbb {F}}(\mathbf {x})$ . We divide the oscillating period $T_{{period}}$ into $M$ evenly spaced intervals, and $t_n=(n-1)T_{{period}}/M$ is the time corresponding to the phase angle of $\phi _n=2(n-1)\pi /M$ . Previously, Yang et al. (Reference Yang, Chong, Wang, Verzicco, Shishkina and Lohse2020) investigated the thermal Stokes problem in pure RB convection, where the temperature oscillated in modulated pure RB convection. The oscillatory temperature can be obtained analytically as $ \tilde {T}(y,t_n)=A{\rm e}^{-y^*/\lambda _s^*}\sin (\phi _n-y^*/\lambda _s^*)$ , with the Stokes thermal boundary layer thickness being $\lambda _s^*=\pi ^{-1/2}f^{*-1/2}Ra^{-1/4}Pr^{-1/4}$ . Here, the term $A{\rm e}^{-y^*/\lambda _s^*}$ indicates that the effect of the oscillating boundary temperature decays exponentially with distance from the boundary, while the term $\sin (\phi _n-y^*/\lambda _s^*)$ indicates a phase lag of $y^*/\lambda _s^*$ in the temperature oscillation as we move away from the boundary.

We compare the analytical and numerical solutions of oscillatory temperature in mixed PRB convection, as shown in figure 21. A good agreement is observed at a high frequency of $f^* = 1$ (see figure 21 a); however, deviations occur at lower frequencies of $f^* = 0.1$ and 0.01 (see figures 21 b and 21 c). These discrepancies may be attributed to two factors. First, the penetration depth of the temperature disturbance induced by the oscillating wall temperature is inversely proportional to the modulation frequency. Consequently, at lower frequencies, the temperature disturbance penetrates deeper into the flow, potentially exceeding the thermal boundary layer thickness. Within the thermal boundary, we can assume a heat conduction profile for the temperature, which aligns with the analytical model (Yang et al. Reference Yang, Chong, Wang, Verzicco, Shishkina and Lohse2020). Outside the thermal boundary, the effects of convection become significant, causing deviations from the analytical predictions. In figure 21, we mark the depth where the oscillating temperature’s amplitude drops to 1 % of its maximum value (approximately equal to 4.6 $\lambda _s^*$ ), as well as the thermal boundary layer thickness (determined from the peak positions of the r.m.s. temperature profile). The results show that at a higher frequency of $f^* = 1$ , the oscillating temperature penetration depth is of the same order of magnitude as the thermal boundary layer thickness. However, at a lower frequency of $f^* = 0.01$ , the penetration depth is an order of magnitude thicker than the thermal boundary layer thickness.

Moreover, our simulations included an imposed pressure gradient (achieved via an equivalent body force), which introduces mean shear that affects the velocity field throughout the fluid domain, including within the thermal boundary layer. This shear enhances convective transport parallel to the wall, modifying the temperature profile. A critical factor here is the ratio of the thermal diffusion time scale to the convective time scale induced by the mean shear. We denote the thermal diffusion time scale $t_{{diff}}$ as the characteristic time it takes for heat to diffuse across the penetration depth $\lambda _s$ , with $t_{{diff}} \propto \lambda _s^2 / \alpha$ (where $\alpha$ is the thermal diffusivity). We also denote the convective time scale $t_{{conv}}$ as the characteristic time it takes for fluid particles to be advected by the mean shear across the penetration depth, with $t_{{conv}} \propto \lambda _s / U$ (where $U$ is the characteristic velocity of the Poiseuille flow near the wall). Comparing these time scales, we have the ratio $t_{{diff}} / t_{{conv}}\propto f^{*-1/2}$ . As the modulation frequency $f^*$ decreases, the thermal diffusion time scale $t_{{diff}}$ becomes larger compared with the convective time scale $t_{{conv}}$ , indicating that convection becomes more significant within the penetration depth. This increased significance of convection, driven by the mean shear, contributes to the discrepancies between the analytical and simulation results.