In this workshop we studied a specific type of hydrodynamics instability, the Rayleigh Benard convection phenomena. With some initial conditions, the coupling between fluid dynamics and heat transfert leads to the development of convection rolls in the flow.
We chose to study a specific application of this phenomena: convection in the earth mantle. The magma is a very viscous fluid with a very slow motion, interacting with the tectonics plates moving on it: scientists advanced two different hypothesis to describe what happens in the mantle, and we used Fluent to try to simulate them with a very simple model.
The phase change at 670 km is the key-parameter in the description of convection in the mantle:
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We used Fluent to try to simulate the convection in the mantle, we made
the hypothesis that the viscosity gradient was playing the main role in
the mantle convection mecanism: therefore we chose to initialize the phenomona
with a viscosity gradient between the two mantle layers.