MULTICOMPONENT CONVECTION.

Abstract

In two early reviews of this subject, the phenomena described were adequately covered by the name double-diffusive convection. The first purpose of this article is to show how the presence of several components in a fluid, each influencing the density and having different diffusive properties, can lead to dynamic instabilities, often well before a fluid system would become statically unstable. The convective phenomena described depend essentially on gravity or some other external force field. It is the coupling between this force field and diffusion that organizes the flow into a form that produces much more rapid transports than diffusion alone could achieve. Linear stability theories have now been extended to increasingly complicated multicomponent systems, and these give a first indication of the fully developed behavior. Refs.