Prandtl and Rayleigh number dependence of heat transport in high Rayleigh number thermal convection

Abstract Results from direct numerical simulation for three-dimensional Rayleigh–Bénard convection in samples of aspect ratio $\Gamma = 0. 23$ and $\Gamma = 1/ 2$ up to Rayleigh number $\mathit{Ra}= 2\ensuremath{\times} 1{0}^{12} $ are presented. The broad range of Prandtl numbers $0. 5\lt \mathit{Pr}\lt 10$ is considered. In contrast to some experiments, we do not see any increase in $\mathit{Nu}/ {\mathit{Ra}}^{1/ 3} $ with increasing $\mathit{Ra}$, neither due to an increasing $\mathit{Pr}$, nor due to constant heat flux boundary conditions at the bottom plate instead of constant temperature boundary conditions. Even at these very high $\mathit{Ra}$, both the thermal and kinetic boundary layer thicknesses obey Prandtl–Blasius scaling.