ON THE STABILITY OF CONVECTIVE MOTION CAUSED BY INHOMOGENEOUS INTERNAL HEAT-SOURCES

The stability of a convective fluid motion caused by inhomogeneous hea t sources in a tall vertical annulus is investigated in this paper. Cr itical Grashof numbers are computed for different values of the ratio R of the internal to the external radii of the annulus, and Prandtl nu mbers for axisymmetric and asymmetric perturbations. Stability increas es as the inhomogeneity of the heat sources increases. For strongly in homogeneous heat sources, there is a transition from the axisymmetric to the asymmetric mode as the Prandtl number grows.