Numerical investigation of the first instabilities in the differentially heated 8:1 cavity

We present a new Galerkin-Legendre spectral projection solver for the simulation of natural convection in a differentially heated cavity. The projection method is applied to the study of the first non-stationary instabilities of the flow in a 8:1 cavity. Statistics of the periodic solution are reported for a Rayleigh number of 3.4 x 10(5). Moreover, we investigate the location and proper-ties of the first Hopf bifurcation and of the three successive bifurcations. The results confirm the previous finding in the range of Rayleigh numbers investigated that the flow instabilities originate in the boundary layer on the vertical walls. A peculiar phenomenon of symmetry breaking and symmetry restoring is observed portraying the first steps of the transition to chaos for this flow. Copyright (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.