Bifurcation Diversity in an Annular Pool Heated from Below: Prandtl and Biot Numbers Effects

In this article the instabilities appearing in a liquid layer are studied numerically by means of the linear stability method. The fluid is confined in an annular pool and is heated from below with a linear decreasing temperature profile from the inner to the outer wall. The top surface is open to the atmosphere and both lateral walls are adiabatic. Using the Rayleigh number as the only control parameter, many kind of bifurcations appear at moderately low Prandtl numbers and depending on the Biot number. Several regions on the Prandtl-Biot plane are identified, their boundaries being formed from competing solutions at codimension-two bifurcation points.