Rigorous upper limits on the vertical heat transport in two-dimensional Rayleigh-Bénard convection between stress-free isothermal boundaries are derived from the Boussinesq approximation of the Navier-Stokes equations. The Nusselt number Nu is bounded in terms of the Rayleigh number Ra according to Nu≤0.2891Ra(5/12) uniformly in the Prandtl number Pr. This scaling challenges some theoretical arguments regarding asymptotic high Rayleigh number heat transport by turbulent convection.
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Whitehead et al. (2011) studied this question.
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