Enhanced heat transport in partitioned thermal convection

Enhancement of heat transport across a fluid layer is of fundamental interest as well as great technological importance. For decades, Rayleigh–Bénard convection has been a paradigm for the study of convective heat transport, and how to improve its overall heat-transfer efficiency is still an open question. Here, we report an experimental and numerical study that reveals a novel mechanism that leads to much enhanced heat transport. When vertical partitions are inserted into a convection cell with thin gaps left open between the partition walls and the cooling/heating plates, it is found that the convective flow becomes self-organized and more coherent, leading to an unprecedented heat-transport enhancement. In particular, our experiments show that with six partition walls inserted, the heat flux can be increased by approximately 30 %. Numerical simulations show a remarkable heat-flux enhancement of up to 2.3 times (with 28 partition walls) that without any partitions.