NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TRAVELING WAVE CONVECTION IN A WEAKLY NONLINEAR REGIME

This paper presents a simulational result on a blinking traveling wave (BTW) state in binary fluid convection in a rectangular cell. The numerical simulations were made using the two-dimensional perturbation equations of full hydrodynamic equations. We found for the first time that the BTW or sloshing traveling wave state is a type of modulated traveling wave (MTW) generated by the motion of a source defect which originates from the reflection effect at the end walls and depends on the reduced Rayleigh number r. Comparison with the localized traveling wave (LTW) shows that the BTW is convective patterns on a weakly nonlinear branch with a small amplitude and the LTW is those on a full nonlinear branch whth a large amplitude. They have different dynamical behaviour. A discontinuous jump from the BTW branch to the stable LTW branch takes place as the oscillatory period lengthens and the amplitude grows above the upper critical value of the BTW.