A new model for mixing by double-diffusive convection (semi-convection). II. The transport of heat and composition through layers

Toby S. Wood, Pascale Garaud, Stephan Stellmach

Published 2012-12-06, updated 2015-01-21Version 2

Regions of stellar and planetary interiors that are unstable according to the Schwarzschild criterion, but stable according to the Ledoux criterion, are subject to a form of oscillatory double-diffusive (ODD) convection often called "semi-convection". In this series of papers, we use an extensive suite of three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations to quantify the transport of heat and composition by ODD convection, and ultimately propose a new 1D prescription that can be used in stellar and planetary structure and evolution models. The first paper in this series demonstrated that under certain conditions ODD convection spontaneously transitions from an initially homogeneously turbulent state into a staircase of convective layers, which results in a substantial increase in the transport of heat and composition. Here, we present simulations of ODD convection in this layered regime, we describe the dynamical behavior of the layers, and we derive empirical scaling laws for the transport through layered convection.