TWO-DIMENSIONAL TRANSIENT NATURAL CONVECTION IN A REPETITIVE GEOMETRY SUBMITTED TO VARIABLE HEATING FROM BELOW: NUMERICAL IDENTIFICATION OF ROUTES LEADING TO CHAOS

Two-dimensional transient natural convection in a horizontal channel periodically heated from below with a temperature varying sinusoidally with time and containing rectangular adiabatic blocks periodically distributed on its lower wall is studied numerically. Parameters of the problem are the Rayleigh number (Ra), the amplitude of the variable temperature, and its temporal period. By considering air (Pr 0.72) as a working fluid and maintaining the geometrical parameters constant, different routes leading to chaos are identified by progressively varying the influencing parameters.