3-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF PENETRATIVE CONVECTION - PENETRATION BELOW A CONVECTION ZONE

We perform full three- dimensional numerical simulations to study the behaviour of penetrative compressible convection below a deep stratifi ed stellar-type convective envelope. The domain of computations is div ided into three distinct regions; the upper 2 % and the lower 40% is k ept convectively stable while the middle 58 % is made unstable to conv ection. Four series of solutions have been computed by varying the pol ytropic index and thus the stability of the lower stable layer. The pe netration distance is found to decrease as the stability of the region beneath the convection zone is increased.