Convective heat transfer through polarized dielectric liquids

Abstract

An electrically insulating layer of a dielectric liquid confined between horizontal conducting electrodes, the upper of which is warmer, becomes unstable with respect to the onset of steady convection when the voltage between the plates reaches a critical value. In a rapidly varying ac field this instability is due to the Kelvin body force which depends on the polarization P and the gradient of the electric field E. Our recent linear stability analysis [Chem. Phys. Letters 179, 311 (1991)] for the critical voltage showed that as the gravitational Rayleigh number becomes increasingly negative the critical wave number at the onset of convection becomes very large. We now extend this analysis to examine how the Nusselt number depends on the extent of supercriticality in the weakly nonlinear regime. As the temperature drop between the plates increases the fraction of the heat transfer associated with convection is found to pass through a maximum value when the critical horizontal wave number is close to 4 times its value when gravity is absent.