Instabilities of convection rolls in a high Prandtl number fluid

An experiment on the stability of convection rolls with varying wave-number is described in extension of the earlier work by Chen & Whitehead (1968). The results agree with the theoretical predictions by Busse (1967 a ) and show two distinct types of instability in the form of non-oscillatory disturbances. The ‘zigzag instability’ corresponds to a bending of the original rolls; in the ‘cross-roll instability’ rolls emerge at right angles to the original rolls. At Rayleigh numbers above 23,000 rolls are unstable for all wave-numbers and are replaced by a three-dimensional form of stationary convection for which the name ‘bimodal convection’ is proposed.