Geometry-controlled heat transport in differentially heated cavity through the lens of DNS and resolvent analysis

Abstract

We perform direct numerical simulations (DNS) and resolvent analysis of natural convection in a differentially heated cavity (DHC) at Prandtl number $Pr = 0.7$, systematically varying the aspect ratio $\Gamma$ over $0.1 \leq \Gamma \leq 60$ and Rayleigh number $Ra = 10^5$--$10^8$. Across this nearly three-decade range of $\Gamma$, the Nusselt number $Nu$ exhibits four distinct regimes driven purely by geometric confinement via altering the structure of large-scale circulation (LSC): $Nu$ rises in regime I, peaks and plateaus in regime II, falls monotonically in regime III, and reaches a minimum and plateaus again in regime IV. Resolvent analysis shows a corresponding shift in the flow's response structure across these regimes: the maximum gain drops monotonically through regime I, bottoms out in regime II, and rises sharply through regime III and IV. The dominant response mode also changes character---from a diagonal mode peaking near the adiabatic walls, to a horizontally oriented structure peaking in the bulk flow (regimes I--II), to a vertical stack of such structures in regimes III--IV. The resolvent response tracks the sensitivity of the LSC to perturbations, which is minimized in regime II and maximized in regimes III and IV. Notably, the LSC configuration with the \textit{lowest} sensitivity consistently corresponds to the \textit{highest} heat flux, across all $Ra$ examined. We link this sensitivity to the LSC's anisotropy, quantified by the ratio of horizontal-to-vertical velocity Reynolds numbers ($Re_u/Re_v$). Remarkably, this ratio stays nearly constant ($\approx 0.45$) at the optimal (heat-transport-maximizing) aspect ratio ($\Gamma_{\mathrm{opt}}$) across all $Ra$, and the corresponding $\Gamma_{\mathrm{opt}}$ follows the power-law scaling $\Gamma_{\mathrm{opt}} \sim Ra^{-0.17 \pm 0.01}$.