• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.1784-1795
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• 1998

Natural convection of low Prandtl number fluids with $Pr{\leq}0.2$ in a narrow horizontal annulus is numerically investigated. For $Pr{\leq}0.2$, hydrodynamic instability induces oscillatory multicellular flows consisting of multiple like-rotating cells. For a fluid with $Pr{\approx}0$, the region in which instability of conduction regime first forms is near the vertical section of annulus, and the multiple cells are distributed uniformly in the lower and upper regions of annulus. As Pr increases, however, the cells are shifted upwards. The like-rotating cells drift downward, as time goes on, and the speed of travel increases with increase of Pr. For a fluid with Pr=0.1, a flow with period-4 solution is observed between chaotic states.