SYMMETRIC LARGE-SCALE VELOCITY FIELDS IN TWO-DIMENSIONAL THERMAL CONVECTION
Recent experiments on thermal convection in finite containers [Krishnamurti & Howard, 1981; Howard & Krishnamurti, 1986] show the presence of flows spanning the largest dimension of the container. Numerical simulations of 2D thermal convection showing large-scale flows of this kind have been presented elsewhere [Prat et al., 1993a, 1993b]. In every known example the large scale velocity field has been found to display a vertical profile either antisymmetric or showing rather small departures from antisymmetry. In contrast, theoretical group arguments support the existence of symmetric velocity profiles. In the present paper it will be shown that large-scale velocity fields with vertically symmetric velocity profile do exist. In spite of these flows not being dominant in the range of parameters explored, their geometry and dynamics will be discussed on the basis of a linear stability analysis.