Planform of convection with strongly temperature-dependent viscosity

Abstract

This paper experimentally investigates the convective planform near critical in a fluid layer whose temperature-dependent viscosity varies from top to bottom by up to a factor of 1500. Convection occurs in three different planforms: rolls, hexagons and squares. The square planform, which appears only for fluids with viscosity variation greater than about 50, replaces the hexagonal convection pattern as the Rayleigh number increases much above critical. The large amplitude of hexagonal convection with strong viscosity variation precludes studying the hexagon-square transition with perturbation methods of the type used to study the hexagon-roll transitions at smaller viscosity variations.