Measured multiple flow states in quasi-two-dimensional turbulent thermal convection with aspect ratio 10

We report an experimental investigation of turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection in a quasi-two-dimensional rectangular cell of large aspect ratio (Γ = 10) over the Rayleigh number range 5.4 × 10⁷ Ra 7.2 × 10⁹ and Prandtl number range 4.3 Pr 67.3. Planar particle image velocimetry measurements show that the flow self-organises into several horizontally aligned convection rolls, and repeated experiments under identical parameters (both Ra and Pr) reveal that the number of rolls varies within the range of 3–7 with 6 being the most probable, which demonstrates the presence of multiple flow states. When Pr is increased to 67.3, the number of roll-like structures increases significantly, indicating a structural transition from a roll-dominated to a plume-dominated flow. This transition is reflected in the global momentum transport, for Pr 18.3, the Reynolds number scales as Re ∼ Ra^0.58Pr^−0.97, whereas the scaling is changed to Re ∼ Ra^0.72 when Pr reaches 67.3. Within individual rolls, we further examine the Reynolds numbers based on horizontal and vertical velocity components, Re_u,roll and Re_w,roll, and find that the former increases while the latter decreases with roll size (quantified as the aspect ratio of the roll Γ_roll) due to continuity constraints, with their ratio following Re_w,roll/Re_u,roll ∼ Γ^−0.61_roll . We impose different initial flow conditions (roll structures) with controlled perturbations and demonstrate that the initial condition can influence the final turbulent state. We show that the number of horizontally aligned rolls regulates the global transport: a larger number of rolls induces greater vertical momentum and heat transfer. Our study provides the first systematic experimental evidence of multiple flow states in large aspect ratio turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection and clarify how these states influence global transport.