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Effects of kinematic and magnetic boundary conditions on the dynamics of convection-driven plane layer dynamos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2022

Souvik Naskar
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India
Anikesh Pal*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India
*
†Email address for correspondence: pala@iitk.ac.in

Abstract

Rapidly rotating convection-driven dynamos are investigated under different kinematic and magnetic boundary conditions using direct numerical simulations. At a fixed rotation rate, represented by the Ekman number $Ek=5\times 10^{-7}$, the thermal forcing is varied from $2$ to $20$ times its value at the onset of convection ($\mathcal {R}=Ra/Ra_c=2\unicode{x2013}20$, where $Ra$ is the Rayleigh number), keeping the fluid properties constant ($Pr=Pr_m=1$, where $Pr$ and $Pr_m$ are the thermal and magnetic Prandtl numbers). The statistical behaviour of the dynamos, including the force balance, energetics, and heat transport, depends on the boundary conditions that dictate both the boundary layer and the interior dynamics. At a fixed thermal forcing ($\mathcal {R}=3$), the structure and strength of the magnetic field produced by the dynamos, especially near the walls, depend on both velocity and magnetic boundary conditions. Though the leading-order force balance in the bulk remains geostrophic, the Lorentz force becomes comparable to the Coriolis force inside the thermal boundary layer with no-slip, perfectly conducting conditions. In this case, a term signifying the work done by the Lorentz force in the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) equation is found to have some components that extract energy from the velocity field to produce the magnetic field, while some other components extract energy from the magnetic field to produce TKE. However, with no-slip, pseudo-vacuum conditions, all the components of the work done by the Lorentz force perform unidirectional energy transfer to produce magnetic energy from the kinetic energy of the fluid to sustain dynamo action. We find heat transfer enhancement in the rotating dynamo convection, as compared with non-magnetic rotating convection, with the peak enhancement lying in the range $\mathcal {R}=3\unicode{x2013}4$. For free-slip conditions, in the absence of an Ekman layer, the dynamo action may alter the heat transport significantly by suppressing the formation of large-scale vortices. However, the highest heat transfer enhancement is found at $\mathcal {R}=3$ with no-slip, perfectly conducting walls, which can be attributed to a local magnetorelaxation of the rotational constraint due to enhanced Lorentz force inside the thermal boundary layer.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Table 1. Statistics of the dynamo simulations with NSC boundary conditions.

Figure 1

Table 2. Statistics of the dynamo simulations with NSV boundary conditions.

Figure 2

Table 3. Statistics of the dynamo simulations with FSC boundary conditions.

Figure 3

Table 4. Statistics of the dynamo simulations with FSV boundary conditions. In tables 1–4, subscript ‘0’ represents the properties for non-magnetic RC simulations. Such RC simulations with LSV are indicated by $\#$ in the last column.

Figure 4

Figure 1. Vertical variation of the r.m.s. quantities: (a) horizontal velocity $u_{1,rms}$; (b) vertical velocity $u_{3,rms}$; (c) r.m.s. temperature $\theta _{r.m.s.}$; (d) mean temperature $\bar {\theta }$ at $\mathcal {R}=3$. All the quantities are averaged in time and in the horizontal directions. Dashed lines are used as needed for improving the clarity of the plots.

Figure 5

Figure 2. (a) Plume sites visualized by an isosurface of the instantaneous temperature field with $\theta =0.45$, coloured by the horizontal velocity for the NSC case at $\mathcal {R}=3$. A typical plume site in (a), as marked by the dashed rectangle, has been magnified and coloured by horizontal and vertical velocities in (b,c) respectively.

Figure 6

Figure 3. Vertical variation of the r.m.s. quantities: (a) enstrophy, (b) relative helicity, (c) mean magnetic field, (d) r.m.s. magnetic field at $\mathcal {R}=3$. All the quantities are averaged in time and in the horizontal directions. The mean and r.m.s. magnetic fields in figures (c) and (d) are plotted using solid lines for x1-direction and dashed line for x3-direction.

Figure 7

Figure 4. Vertical variation of forces for (a) NS, (b) FS, (c) NSC, (d) FSC, (e) NSV, ( f) FSV cases at $\mathcal {R}=3$. The horizontally averaged force distribution is shown in the bulk and near the bottom plate (inset).

Figure 8

Figure 5. Vertical variation of the force components for (a,b) NS and (c,d) NSC cases. (a,c) Horizontal components of the forces $F_h=\sqrt {F^2_{x_1}+F^2_{x_2}}$; (b,d) vertical components ($F_{x_3}$). The horizontally averaged force distribution is shown here at $\mathcal {R}=3$ both in the bulk, and near the bottom plate (inset).

Figure 9

Figure 6. Vertical profiles of the forces for (a) NS, (b) NSC cases at $\mathcal {R}=20$. The horizontally averaged force distribution is shown in the bulk and near the bottom plate (inset).

Figure 10

Figure 7. Vertical variation of TKE budget terms at $\mathcal {R}=3$ for both no-slip (a,c,e) and free-slip (b,d, f) boundaries. Energy budget terms are presented for non-magnetic simulations (a,b) as well as dynamo simulations with both perfectly conducting (c,d) and pseudo-vacuum (e, f) conditions. The horizontally averaged budget terms in (A1) are averaged in time. The profiles near the bottom wall are magnified in the insets. The balance terms signify the difference between the left- and right-hand sides of (A1), and indicate sufficient accuracy of the present calculations.

Figure 11

Figure 8. Variation of the magnetic production terms for (a) NSC and (b) NSV cases at $\mathcal {R}=3$. The components of the work done by the Lorentz force $\mathcal {P}_3$ are represented by the colours: black for $i=1$, red for $i=2$, and blue for $i=3$. Here, the lines with $+$ symbols and filled and open circles represent $j=1$, $j=2$ and $j=3$, respectively.

Figure 12

Figure 9. Variation of the Nusselt number ratio $Nu/Nu_0$ as a function of the thermal forcing for different boundary conditions. Here, $Nu_0$ represents the Nusselt number for the non-magnetic RC simulations.

Figure 13

Figure 10. Contours of horizontal TKE, $K_h=1/2(u_{1}^2+u_{2}^2)$ for (a) FS and (b) FSC cases at $\mathcal {R}=4$. The instantaneous plots are shown in the horizontal mid-plane at $x_3=0.5$ to illustrate the presence of LSV in (a), which is superimposed with streamlines. The dynamo simulation with FSC conditions generates small-scale velocity and magnetic fields as illustrated by contours of TKE and magnetic field $B_1$ in (b,c), respectively. The vertical temperature gradients at $\mathcal {R}=4$ are shown in (d) for the free-slip cases. The mean temperature profile near the lower wall is also shown in the inset.

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