Acta Mechanica Sinica

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-020-00973-0

RESEARCH PAPER

Double diffusive convection in the finger regime for different Prandtl

and Schmidt numbers
Yantao Yang1

Received: 18 April 2020 / Revised: 1 June 2020 / Accepted: 10 June 2020

© The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
In this work fingering double diffusive convection, i.e. the buoyancy-driven flow with fluid density being affected by two
different scalar components, is investigated numerically with special efforts on the influences of the physical properties of
two scalar components. We show that different scalar properties can affect the global transport behaviors. The concentration
flux exhibits different exponents in their power-law scalings for different combinations of scalar components. The scaling
exponents of heat flux, however, depend mainly on the ratio of the diffusivities of two scalars. If one uses the local parameters
of the finger layer in the bulk, the behaviors are very similar to those found in the fully periodic simulations. The horizontal
width of the fingers is consistent with the wavelength of the fast growing mode. For one case we observe evidences of the
thermohaline staircase, namely, the typical width of the flow structures changes significantly in different layers within the
flow domain.

Keywords Double diffusive convection · Convection turbulence · Turbulent mixing

1 Introduction A key point which distinguishes DDC from the normal

Double diffusive convection (DDC) refers to the buoyancy-
driven convection flow where the fluid density depends on
two scalar components with very different molecular dif-
fusivities. DDC occurs in many natural environments and
engineering applications, including astrophysics [1,2], geo-
science [3,4], and process engineering [5]. The most relevant
terrestrial environment is the ocean since the density of sea-
water is determined by both temperature and salinity, and
their diffusivities differ by two orders of magnitude. Indeed,
DDC has been widely observed in oceans [6–9]. It is esti-
mated that over 40% of the Earth ocean favors the occurrence
of DDC [10]. DDC can greatly enhance the diapycnal mix-
ing [7], and may even have influences on ocean climate [11].
Therefore, it has drawn a lot of research interests in the
past [12,13]. A comprehensive review can be found in the
recent book of Radko [14].
B Yantao Yang
yantao.yang@pku.edu.cn
1 SKLTCS and Department of Mechanics and Engineering
Science, BIC-ESAT, College of Engineering, and Institute of
Ocean Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Rayleigh–Bénard convection is that the two scalar com-
ponents have very different diffusivities. The difference in
diffusivity allows various new instability mechanisms to
develop even when the overall density is stably stratified. In
the upper part of the (sub-)tropic oceans, both temperature
and salinity decrease with depth and fingering instability can
occur [15]. Here the flow is driven by the unstable salinity
gradient and stabilized by the temperature gradient, which
is in the fingering regime. In the upper part of many polar
regions, both temperature and salinity increase with the depth
and the DDC happens in the diffusive regime.
It is very challenging to study DDC by experiments or
numerical simulations. Experiments for DDC require con-
trolling two scalar fields, which can be difficult. Depending
on the exact experimental setup and the aim of the study,
different combinations of scalar components were used in
the past, including the heat-salt system [16], the heat-sugar
system [17], the salt–sugar system [18], and the recent heat-
copper-ion system [19]. The ratio between the diffusivities of
two scalars ranges from 3 for the salt-sugar system to over 200
for the heat-copper-ion system. In numerical simulations, the
main challenge is to deal with the very small diffusivity of
concentration field such as salt, which requires very fine reso-
lution and huge amount of computing resources. A common

123

practice in conducting three-dimensional direct numerical
simulations of DDC is to use a larger diffusivity for the con-
centration field [20,21].
Then a natural question which needs to be answered is
how the different combinations of scalar diffusivities affect
the dynamics of fingering DDC. Some theoretical works has
been done to discuss the influences of the different diffusiv-
ities [22], but to our knowledge a systematic study on the
effects of the scalar diffusivities has not been reported yet.
The present work presents preliminary results towards this
direction. Specifically, we conduct new simulations for dif-
ferent combinations of scalar components at very high scalar
gradients. In combination with our previous datasets [23,24],
we focus on how the transport and the finger structures behave
for different scalar diffusivities.
The paper is organized as follows. In Sect. 2 we briefly
describe the governing equations and numerical methods. In
Sect. 3 we present our main results. Finally conclusions are
given in Sect. 4.
2 Governing equations and numerical
methods
We consider a layer of fluid bounded from top and bottom by
two parallel plates. The two plates are separated by a height
H and perpendicular to the direction of gravity. We employ
the Oberbeck-Buossinesq approximation in our governing
equations, namely the density depends linearly on two scalar
fields as ρ = ρ0 [1 − βT (T − T0 ) + βC (C − C0 )]. Here, ρ
is density, T is temperature, C is concentration, βT is the
thermal expansion coefficient, and βC is the solutal contrac-
tion coefficient, respectively. The subscript “0” denotes the
value at the reference point. Moreover, the approximation
assumes that the two scalars only generate buoyancy force
in the momentum equation. Then, the governing equations
read
∂t u i + u j ∂ j u i = −∂i p + ν∂ 2j u i + gδi3 (βT T − βC C), (1)
∂t T + u j ∂ j T = κT ∂ 2j T , (2)
∂t C + u j ∂ j C = κC ∂ 2j C, (3)
∂i u i = 0. (4)
Here, u i with i = 1, 2, 3 are the three components of veloc-
ity, p is pressure, ν is kinematic viscosity, g is gravitational
acceleration, δi j is the Kronecker Delta, κT and κC are the
diffusivities of two scalars, respectively.
To drive the flow, we maintain a constant temperature
difference ΔT and a constant concentration difference ΔC
between the two plates. The top plate has higher tempera-
ture and concentration so that the flow is in the fingering
regime. The flow quantities are nondimensionalized by the
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Y. Yang
layer height H , the free-fall velocity of concentration field
√
gβC ΔC H , and the two scalar differences ΔT and ΔC . Then
four control parameters are of relevance, saying the Prandtl
and the Schmidt numbers
ν ν
Pr = , Sc = , (5)
κT κC
and two Rayleigh numbers
gβT ΔT H 3 gβC ΔC H 3
RaT = , RaC = . (6)
νκT νκC
Two other commonly used parameters, which are the com-
binations of the above four, are the Lewis number Le =
Sc/Pr and the density ratio Λ = (βT ΔT )/(βC ΔC ) =
(Sc RaT )/(Pr RaC ). Thus, Le is the ratio between two
scalar diffusivities, and Λ is the ratio of the density anomaly
induced by the temperature difference to that by the con-
centration difference. Larger Λ indicates that the relative
strength of the stabilizing temperature difference is stronger.
To numerically solve (1–4), we utilize our in-house
finite-difference code with a fraction-time-step method. An
efficient double-grid method is included to deal with the
concentration field with large Sc [25]. The code has been
extensively applied to buoyancy-driven turbulence and wall-
turbulence. In the present study, the two plates have constant
temperature and concentration. Both no-slip and free-slip
boundary conditions are investigated for the two plates. In
the horizontal directions periodic conditions are applied.
The horizontal size of the domain is set to be at least 10
times larger than the finger width, which can be estimated
as the half of the wavelength for the fastest growing mode
d = π Le1/4 /[RaC (Λ−1)]1/4 [21,26]. Initially both scalars
have linear distributions between two plates, and small ran-
dom perturbations are added to trigger the flow.
Three different combinations of (Pr , Sc) are consid-
ered, namely (1, 100), (7, 70), and (7, 700), respectively. The
Rayleigh number of concentration RaC gradually increases
from 109 to 1012 . The Rayleigh number of temperature
increases accordingly so that the density ratio is fixed at
Λ = 1.6, which lies in the range usually observed in the
oceans. For (Pr , Sc) = (7, 700), i.e. the typical values in
ocean, we adopt the data with both no-slip and free-slip plates
from our previous works [23,24]. For the other two combi-
nations of (Pr , Sc), only the free-slip boundary condition is
considered. Thus, four sets of cases are simulated with either
different (Pr , Sc) or velocity boundary conditions at plates.
The resolution is chosen such that the mesh size of the base
grid is smaller than the viscous scale for the momentum field,
and that of the refined grid is smaller than the Batchelor scale
for the concentration fields. The numerical settings and key
responses of the systems are summarized in Appendix.
Double diffusive convection in the finger regime for different Prandtl and Schmidt numbers

3 Results a
(1,100), F (7,700), F
3 (7, 70), F (7,700), N
10
3.1 Scalar transport

We first look at the global responses of the system. In the

mixing process of DDC, key responses include the fluxes of
2
two scalars and the flow velocity, which are measured by the 10
non-dimensional Nusselt and Reynolds numbers as
   10
9
10
10
10
11
10
12
N u T = −u 3 T V ,t κT ΔT H −1 , (7)
  
b
N u C = −u 3 CV ,t κC ΔC H −1 , (8)
1
Re = u r ms H /v. (9) 10

Here ·V ,t stands for the average over the entire domain and
time. u r ms is the root-mean-square (rms) value of velocity 10
0

magnitude. Note that we only include the convective flux in (1,100), F (7,700), F
the definitions of Nusselt numbers. In our simulations the (7, 70), F (7,700), N

Nusselt numbers are calculated by two different methods,

10 9 10 10 10 11 10 12
i.e. by their definitions or by using the exact global balance
relations [23,27]
c 10 3
 

T ≡ κT [∂i T ]2 = κT (ΔT )2 H −2 (N u T + 1), (10)

 V 2

C ≡ κC [∂i C]2 = −κC (ΔC )2 H −2 (N u C + 1).

10
(11)
V

The final value is taken as the average of the results from two
methods.
In Fig. 1 we show the dependences of the two Nusselt
numbers and the Reynolds numbers on the concentration
Rayleigh number. Our previous study shows that the con-
centration flux N u C is mainly determined by RaC for fixed
(Pr , Sc) = (7, 700) [23]. The present results reveal that
for each combination of (Pr , Sc), a scaling law still exists
between N u C and RaC as N u C ∼ RaCα . However, the value
of the scaling exponent α changes for different (Pr , Sc). By
linear fitting we obtain α = 0.26 for (Pr , Sc) = (1, 100),
0.22 for (7, 70), and 0.31 for (7, 700) with both free-slip
and no-slip boundary conditions, respectively. The heat flux
N u T and the Reynolds number Re also show clear power-
law-scaling dependences on RaC , see Fig. 1b, c. The scaling
laws of N u T divide into two distinct groups with different
exponents. The three sets of cases with Le = 100 exhibit
very similar exponents which is about 0.27. For the set
with Le = 10 the exponent is considerably smaller, with
a value of 0.22. The exponent for the power-law scalings of
Re shows relatively weak variations among different sets of
cases, which are all close to 0.4. Interestingly, Fig. 1 sug-
gests that for fixed (Pr , Sc) = (7, 700), velocity boundary
condition, i.e. either free- or no-slip ones, does not affect
the scaling exponents for all three quantities. Compared to
the no-slip boundary, Free-slip boundary does allow larger
velocity and therefore stronger heat and concentration fluxes.
10 1 (1,100), F (7,700), F
(7, 70), F (7,700), N
9 10 11 12
10 10 10 10
Fig. 1 Global responses of the system versus RaC . a Concentration flux
N u C , b Heat flux N u T , and c Reynolds number Re. Different colors
and symbols mark the different combinations of (Pr , Sc) and boundary
conditions, as indicated in the legend, where F stands for free-slip and
N for no-slip, respectively. The dashed lines indicate the corresponding
power-law scalings with the exponents given next to them
In many existing studies with triply periodic domains,
such as those in Refs. [20,22], the only key control param-
eter is the density ratio Λ of the finger layers. However, it
should be pointed out that the density ratio in fully periodic
domain is different from the global density ratio in the cur-
rent simulations. In periodic domain, the finger layer is the
only flow structure due to the periodic boundary condition.
In our bounded domain, two boundary layers develop adja-
cent to the two plates at top and bottom, and the finger layer
only occupies the bulk region between the two boundary lay-
ers. The global density ratio is measured across the domain,
i.e. the combined effects of the bulk finger layer and two
boundary layers. This can be clearly seen in the mean scalar
profiles shown in Fig. 2. For cases with RaC = 1010 , the
mean temperature profiles exhibit very minor deviation from

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 Y. Yang

a 1 b 1 a
(1,100), F (7,700), F
10 2
(7, 70), F (7,700), N
0.8 0.8

0.6 0.6 1
10

0.4 0.4

9 10 11 12
10 10 10 10
0.2 0.2

b 0.8
0 0 (1,100), F (7,700), F
0 0.5 1 0 0.5 1 (7, 70), F (7,700), N
0.7

Fig. 2 Mean profiles of temperature and concentration for two cases 0.6
with RaC = 1010 and free-slip boundary condition. a (Pr , Sc) =
(7, 70), and b (Pr , Sc) = (7, 700), respectively 0.5

the linear profile over the whole domain height. This devia- 0.4

tion becomes more distinct for even higher RaC . The mean 1 2
10 10
concentration profiles, though, clearly reveal the two bound-
ary layers with very high gradient next to the top and bottom
c
plates, and the finger layer in the bulk with a linear profile. (1,100), F (7,700), F
The gradient of the mean concentration in the middle finger (7, 70), F (7,700), N
3
10
layer decreases as Le increases from 10 in Fig. 2a to 100 in
2b.
To solely measure the properties of the finger layers in
the bulk, we define the relevant non-dimensional parameters
by using the measured values in the middle of the domain, 2
10
saying 0.4 < z/H < 0.6. The mean gradients of T and C in
f f
this region, i.e. Tz and C z , are determined by the linear fit-
ting. Then the density ratio of the finger layer is calculated as 10
1
10
2
f f
Λ f = (βT Tz )/(βC C z ). The concentration Nusselt number
f f
of the finger layer is N u C = −u 3 C/(κC C z ). Hereafter 
Fig. 3 a Density ratio of the bulk finger layer Λ f versus the global
denotes the average over the horizontal plane and time. The concentration Rayleigh number RaC . b, c Density flux ratio γ f and
density flux ratio is defined as γ f = βT u 3 T /βC u 3 C, f
the local concentration Nusselt number N u C of the bulk finger layers
which is the ratio of the density anomaly transported by the versus Λ f

temperature flux to that by the concentration flux and com-

monly used for finger layers. Note that all quantities with the
superscript “ f ” are calculated only by the data in the region
0.4 < z < 0.6.
The properties of the finger layers in the bulk are shown
in Fig. 3. As RaC increases, the density ratio of the fin-
ger layer Λ f decreases, indicating a relatively weaker mean
temperature gradient in the bulk, see Fig. 3a. For the global
parameters considered here, the measured density ratios of
the finger layers are quite large compared to the typical value
discovered in the Oceans, saying 1 < Λ f < 2. Λ f also
shows a strong dependence on both Pr and Sc. Generally,
cases with bigger Pr and Sc results in a finger layer with
larger Λ f .
We then look at the fluxes of the finger layers in the bulk. In
Fig. 3b the finger-layer density flux ratio γ f is plotted against
Λ f . All data points divide into two different groups with
different Le. For the set with (Pr , Sc) = (7, 70), γ f first
decreases then increases as Λ f increases, which is a general
behavior for finger layers in fully periodic simulations [20,
22]. For all other three sets with Le = 100, the data points
follow a single trend despite the different Pr and velocity
boundary conditions. It is very interesting to notice that this
dependence of γ f on Λ f is very similar to those found in
the fully periodic domain, e.g. the results with (Pr , Sc) =
(7, 700) [22]. For Le = 100 the minimal of γ f happens

123
Double diffusive convection in the finger regime for different Prandtl and Schmidt numbers
around Λ f = 4, which is smaller than all the values found
here.
As shown in Fig. 3c, the local concentration Nusselt num-
f
ber N u C decreases as Λ f for fixed (Pr , Sc), which is also
similar to the finger layers in the periodic domain. Interest-
ingly, different behaviors can be observed at large and small
Λ f for (Pr , Sc) = (7, 700) with free- or no-slip bound-
f
ary conditions. At small Λ f , N u C has very similar values
for different boundary conditions. While large discrepancy
f
in the value of N u C exists at large Λ. Figure 3a indicates
that large local density ratio Λ f are for the cases with small
RaC . Small RaC corresponds to small ΔC or H . When ΔC
or H is small, the fingering structures in the bulk cannot fully
develop before they reach the boundary layer. When RaC is
large enough, fingers can fully develop within the bulk and
the exact boundary condition at the plates does not matter
anymore. And the local density ratio solely determines the
concentration flux.
Fig. 4 Finger structures shown by the vertical velocity fields on the
mid plane of the x-direction. Panels from let to right are three cases
with (Pr , Sc) = (1, 100) (left), (7, 70) (midlle), and (7, 700) (right),
respectively. All of them have RaC = 1012 and the free-slip bound-
ary conditions. The plots are shown with the original aspect ratios in
simulations
3.2 Finger structures
In this subsection we discuss in details about the finger struc-
tures in the bulk. Figure 4 demonstrates those structures of
three different cases by the contour of vertical velocity u 3 on
a vertical plane. Vertically oriented fingers fulfill the whole
bulk. Slender fingers have small widths and relatively larger
height. The ratio between the finger height to width changes
significantly for different combinations of Pr and Sc.
To measure the width of the fingers, we use the u 3 field
on the horizontal plane at the mid height z/H = 0.5. An
example of such field is shown in Fig. 5 for (Pr , Sc) =
(7, 70) and RaC = 1012 , which clearly shows the horizontal
sections of the finger structures. From these fields the finger
width is extracted by using the horizontal one-dimensional
autocorrelation function
u 3 (x + δr)u 3 (x)
Φh (δr ) = , (12)
u 3 (x)u 3 (x)
where x is the coordinates on the horizontal plane, and
δr = |δr| with δr being the vector connecting two points
between which the correlation coefficient is computed. In
Fig. 6 we plot the autocorrelation function calculated for the
case shown in Fig. 5. The finger width d f is measured by
the δr of the first minimal in the curve, i.e. the most prob-
able distance between two fingers moving in the opposite
directions.
The finger width d f is calculated for all cases and pre-
sented in Fig. 7. The fingers become thinner as RaC increases.
Moreover, the dependence of d f on the global concentration
Rayleigh number RaC is consistent with that predicted by the
−1/4
wavelenght of the fastest growing mode, i.e d f ∼ RaC .
f
For the same RaC , d shows a strong dependence on the
ratio of diffusivities Le = Sc/Pr , instead of the exact val-
ues of Pr and Sc. Specifically, the three sets of cases with
Fig. 5 Contour of the vertical velocity u 3 on the horizontal plane at the
mid height for the case with (Pr , Sc) = (7, 70) and RaC = 1012
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 Y. Yang

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

-0.2

0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04

Fig. 6 Autocorrelation function Φh for the case shown in Fig. 5, namely

(Pr , Sc) = (7, 70) and RaC = 1012
Fig. 8 Mean profiles for the case with (Pr , Sc) = (7, 70) and RaC =
1012 . a Scalar profiles, and b The rms profiles for two velocity compo-
-1
10 (1,100), F (7,700), F nents. The shaded area marks the middle finger layer
(7, 70), F (7,700), N

(1,100), F (7, 70), F (7,700), F (7,700), N

0.012

10 -2 0.010

0.008
9 10 11 12
10 10 10 10
0.006

Fig. 7 Finger width d f versus the global concentration Rayleigh num- 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
−1/4
ber RaC . The dashed line marks the power-law scaling of d f ∼ RaC
Fig. 9 The finger width d f at different heights z for the four cases at
RaC = 1012

Le = 100 have very similar finger widths, which is about

twice of the width for Le = 10.
3.3 Possible staircase state
One of the most striking phenomena induced by fingering
DDC is the thermohaline staircase, which is widely observed
in the sub-tropic oceans [7] and been realized in both exper-
iments and fully periodic numerical simulations [18,20]. In
the staircase state, the flow domain consists of a stack of well-
mixed convection layers separated by finger layers with high
scalar gradients. While for all the cases simulated in the cur-
rent study, one finger layer occupies the whole bulk, as shown
in Fig. 4. However, one particular case shows some signs of
the emerging of staircase, saying with (Pr , Sc) = (7, 70)
and RaC = 1012 .
To demonstrate this, we first look at the mean profiles for
this case, as given in Fig. 8. The mean profiles of temperature
and concentration are given in Fig. 8a. In the middle of the
bulk, i.e. roughly 0.2 < z < 0.8, the two scalars exhibit
perfect linear profiles, which corresponds to the finger layer.
However, above and below this middle finger layer and the
two very thin boundary layers adjacent to the two plates, there
are two regions with much smaller scalar gradients compared
to the linear segment of the finger layer. The lower one locates
in the region 0 < z < 0.2, while the upper one in 0.8 < z <
1.0, respectively. In Fig. 8b we also show the profiles of the
rms values for the horizontal velocity magnitude u rhms and
the vertical velocity u rz ms . The rms values of the the velocity
components are significantly larger in the two regions above
and below the middle finger layer than those within the finger
layer. Therefore, in these two regions the mean scalar profiles
have smaller gradients and both the horizontal and vertical
velocities are stronger, indicating a local mixing at higher
level.
Difference between these two better mixed regions and
the finger layer in between can already be visually observed
in the instantaneous flow field on the vertical plane, see the
middle panel of Fig. 4. The horizontal length scale is clearly
different at different heights of the domain. To quantitatively
demonstrate the varying of the horizontal length scale, we
calculate the finger width d f at different height z by using
the correlation functions (12). Indeed, the width d f is much

123
Double diffusive convection in the finger regime for different Prandtl and Schmidt numbers

Table 1 Summary of numerical parameters and global responses

d f (×10−2 )
f
Type Pr Sc RaC Γ Nx , Nz mx , mz tstat N uT N uC Re Λf N uC γ f

Free-slip 1 100 109 1.2 288,384 3,2 200 1.370 131.6 39.04 16.0 134.5 0.484 6.07
1010 0.6 288,576 3,3 200 1.717 253.6 98.26 9.58 264.0 0.479 3.52
1011 0.4 432,864 3,3 180 2.347 470.6 237.2 6.35 506.1 0.483 2.07
1012 0.2 1024,2048 2,3 76 3.341 798.7 541.1 4.89 739.8 0.467 1.19
Free-slip 7 70 109 2.0 384,384 4,2 400 4.578 90.80 26.26 4.39 97.17 0.647 3.86
1010 1.0 576,576 2,2 400 7.061 159.8 64.59 3.68 163.5 0.612 2.17
1011 0.6 768,1152 2,2 200 11.06 266.4 153.1 3.26 234.8 0.596 1.19
1012 0.3 768,2304 2,2 120 16.88 414.6 355.5 2.90 327.7 0.606 0.671
Free-slip 7 700 109 0.7 256,384 4,4 320 1.515 135.5 5.065 105 140.6 0.666 6.66
1010 0.5 384,768 4,4 200 1.919 290.0 14.18 38.7 308.8 0.531 3.39
1011 0.3 576,1728 3,4 105 2.686 582.5 36.43 17.1 611.2 0.478 1.89
1012 0.16 576,2304 3,4 70 4.067 1109 90.97 8.93 1397 0.477 1.12
No-slip 7 700 109 0.7 256,384 3,3 320 1.255 71.63 3.941 53.7 72.61 0.637 6.77
1010 0.5 384,768 3,3 160 1.535 146.4 10.11 40.9 152.4 0.616 3.69
1011 0.32 480,960 3,4 200 1.935 299.1 26.12 25.1 304.8 0.504 1.89
1012 0.16 768,2304 2,4 160 2.756 602.2 66.60 16.7 596.5 0.459 1.05
The resolutions in the y-direction are the same as those in the x-direction. The global density ratio is fixed at Λ = 1.6

larger in the two regions above and below the middle finger
layer, where d f is almost constant.
We also calculate d f at different heights for the other
three cases with RaC = 1012 , which are included in Fig. 9
for comparison. Clearly, only for the case with (Pr , Sc) =
(7, 70) the finger width d f near the boundary is much higher
than that in the middle of the bulk, indicating different layers
in the flow domain. d f only varies slightly for all the other
three cases, corresponding to a nearly homogeneous finger
layer in the bulk. These results provide limited but valuable
information about the parameter ranges where the staircase
occurs. The lower bound of RaC for the staircase regime is
about 1012 for (Pr , Sc) = (7, 70), or Le = 10. The other two
combinations of (Pr , Sc) both have Le = 100, and no sign
of the staircase state emerges. Therefore, the minimal RaC
for the staircase to happen increases as Le becomes larger.
For Le = 100 as in the ocean, the minimal RaC is beyond
1012 , which is very challenging for numerical simulation.
4 Conclusions and discussions
In the present work we numerically investigate the fingering
DDC which is driven by the concentration difference and sta-
bilized by the temperature difference. Especially, we examine
the effects of different combinations of molecular diffusiv-
ities. Three different combinations of Prandtl and Schmidt
numbers are considered. Such results not only provide new
insights into the dynamics of fingering DDC, but also help us
to put the experimental and numerical observations, which
usually have smaller Le, into the content of the real environ-
ments with larger Le, such as the oceans.
Specifically, we found that the dependence of concentra-
tion flux on the concentration Rayleigh number is affected
by Pr and Sc more strongly than those of heat flux and
flow Reynolds number. The behaviors of the heat flux depend
more on Le, i.e. the ratio between Sc and Pr , instead of the
exact values of Pr and Sc. In our set up, two thin boundary
layers exist adjacent to the top and bottom plates, and a fin-
ger layer develops in the bulk between two boundary layers.
If one measures the local properties of the finger layer, i.e.
those defined by the local mean gradients of scalar compo-
nents, similarities can be observed between the results of our
configuration and those from fully periodic domains.
Although the global density ratio is fixed in all our simu-
lations, the local density ratio Λ f of the middle finger layer
varies for different global parameters. Λ f decreases as RaC
increases, but all the values are much larger than those typ-
ically found in the ocean, for which a much higher RaC is
needed. The dependence of the density flux ratio γ f on Λ f
in the finger layer is very close to those fund in the fully peri-
odic simulations. The horizontal width of the fingers scales
−1/4
as d f ∼ RaC , which is consistent with the wavelength of
the fastest growing modes.
Finally, we observe that the staircase state starts to emerge
in only one case of our simulations, saying (Pr , Sc) =
(7, 70) and RaC = 1012 . Fingering staircase is one of the
most intriguing phenomena caused by DDC in the ocean, and
many questions remain open in the field. The current results
provide useful informations about the parameter range where

123

the staircase state may exist, which will be investigated in
future.
Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Major Research
Plan of National Natural and Science Foundation of China for Turbulent
Structures (Grants 91852107 and 91752202).
Appendix
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