Effect of sidewall conductance on heat-transport measurements for turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection - art. no. 015303

For measurements of turbulent heat transport in Rayleigh-Benard convection the correction for the sidewall conductance is usually neglected or based o n measurements or estimates for the empty cell. It is argued that the later al thermal coupling between the fluid and the wall can invalidate these app roaches, and that corrections based on calculations of the two-dimensional temperature fields are required in some cases. These corrections can increa se gamma obtained from fits of N=NoRgamma (R is the Rayleigh number) to the Nusselt number N(R) by 0.02 or more, yielding values in the range 0.30 to 0.33, which are larger than most theoretical predictions.