Optimal Heat Transport in Rayleigh-B\'enard Convection

Steady flows that optimize heat transport are obtained for two-dimensional Rayleigh-B\'enard convection with no-slip horizontal walls for a variety of Prandtl numbers $Pr$ and Rayleigh number up to $Ra\sim 10^9$. Power law scalings of $Nu\sim Ra^{\gamma}$ are observed with $\gamma\approx 0.31$, where the Nusselt number $Nu$ is a non-dimensional measure of the vertical heat transport. Any dependence of the scaling exponent on $Pr$ is found to be extremely weak. On the other hand, the presence of two local maxima of $Nu$ with different horizontal wavenumbers at the same $Ra$ leads to the emergence of two different flow structures as candidates for optimizing the heat transport. For $Pr \lesssim 7$, optimal transport is achieved at the smaller maximal wavenumber. In these fluids, the optimal structure is a plume of warm rising fluid which spawns left/right horizontal arms near the top of the channel, leading to downdrafts adjacent to the central updraft. For $Pr > 7$ at high-enough Ra, the optimal structure is a single updraft absent significant horizontal structure, and characterized by the larger maximal wavenumber.