Rotating Thermal Flows in Natural and Industrial Processes

From the Preface

The relevance of self-organization, pattern formation, nonlinear phenomena and non-equilibrium behavior in a wide range of fluid-dynamics problems in rotating systems, somehow related to the science of materials, crystal growth, thermal engineering, meteorology, oceanography, geophysics and astrophysics, calls for a concerted approach using the tools of thermodynamics, fluid-dynamics, statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, mathematical modeling and numerical simulation, in synergy with experimentally oriented work.
The reason behind such a need, of which the present book may be regarded as a natural consequence, is that in many instances of relevance in such fields one witnesses remarkable affinities between large-scale-level processes on one side and the same entities on the smaller (laboratory) scale: despite the common origin (they are related to “rotational effects”), such similarities (and the important related implications) are often ignored in typical analyses related to one or the other category of studies.
With the specific intent to extend the treatment given in an earlier Wiley’s text (Thermal Convection: Patterns, Evolution and Stability, Chichester, 2009, which was conceived under a similar spirit), the present book is entirely focused on hybrid regimes of convection in which one of the involved forces is represented by standard gravity or surface tension gradients (under various heating conditions: from below, from the side, etc.), while the other one arises in virtue of rotation.
Here the use of jargon is avoided, this being done under the declared intent to increase the book readability and, in particular, make it understandable also for those individuals who are not “pure” meteorologists (or “pure” professionals/researchers working in the field of materials science), thereby promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge integration.