Rayleigh-Benard Convection (two-dimensional and very turbulent)

Numerical simulation of highly turbulent two-dimensional Rayleigh-Benard convection. Be sure to watch this in HD! Hot (red) fluid rises from the hot bottom plate while cold (blue) fluid falls down from the cold top plate. The mean temperature corresponds to white. The Rayleigh number is 10^13 and the Prandtl number is 1; the aspect ratio of the simulation is 16:9. Two seconds of the video correspond to one so-called free-fall time unit, i.e. the travel-time from plate to plate of a parcel of hot fluid that is accelerated by gravity and not slowed down by surrounding fluid. The numerical resolution is 7680x4320 gridpoints, i.e. one pixel of the 1080p-Video corresponds to 4x4 gridpoints.