THE STABILITY OF A SINGLE-CELL STEADY-STATE SOLUTION IN A TRIANGULAR ENCLOSURE

For a triangular domain with a sloping cold upper surface and warm lower horizontal surface, and when the aspect ratio, or equivalently the slope, is very small, the three-dimensional problem may be reduced to a local two-dimensional problem between horizontally parallel planes at each location along the enclosure horizontal extent, reducing the problem to the classical Rayleigh-Benard there. In this simple way it is possible to obtain a guide to the values of the critical Rayleigh number above which a known steady-state solution is not stable to perturbations in the flow in a specified geometry.