Dynamic Bifurcation and Stability in the Rayleigh-Benard Convection

We study in this article the bifurcation and stability of the solutions of the Boussinesq equations, and the onset of the Rayleigh-Benard convection. A nonlinear theory for this problem is established in this article using a new notion of bifurcation called attractor bifurcation and its corresponding theorem developed recently by the authors in [6]. This theory includes the following three aspects. First, the problem bifurcates from the trivial solution an attractor A_R when the Rayleigh number R crosses the first critical Rayleigh number R_c for all physically sound boundary conditions, regardless of the multiplicity of the eigenvalue R_c for the linear problem. Second, the bifurcated attractor A_R is asymptotically stable. Third, when the spatial dimension is two, the bifurcated solutions are also structurally stable and are classified as well. In addition, the technical method developed provides a recipe, which can be used for many other problems related to bifurcation and pattern formation.

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Published 1 January 2004