Parabolic flight experiment 'Convection in a Cylinder' – Convection patterns in varying buoyancy forces

Within the project 'Convection in a Cylinder' (CiC) heat transfer enhancement is studied for the case of two concentric, vertically aligned cylinders. The cylindrical gap is filled with a dielectric liquid, which viscosity is just few times higher than that of water. The inner cylinder is heated and the outer one is cooled. This setup in a gravitational buoyancy field leads to a fluid movement in a single convective cell with hot fluid rising at the inner boundary and cold fluid sinking at the outer boundary. The top and bottom part of the system shows horizontal movement, again in boundary layers. The strengthening of temperature gradient induces instabilities of that convective motion. If we vary the buoyancy force by means of electro-hydrodynamic effects, the patterns of convection differ from those instabilities rising only from variation of the temperature gradient.