Rayleigh-Bénard thermal convection perturbed by a horizontal heat flux

Controlling Rayleigh-Bénard convection is important in many scientific and practical applications. In this talk, we present a simple means to control the vertical heat transfer in Rayleigh-Bénard convection by injecting heat through one lateral side of the fluid domain and extracting the same amount of heat from the opposite side. This horizontal heat flux regulates the large-scale circulation, and increases the heat transfer rate in the vertical direction. Our numerical and theoretical studies demonstrate how a classical Rayleigh-Bénard convection responds to such a perturbation, when the system is near or well above the onset of convection.