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For any differential equations, we need to specify boundary conditions to
have aunique solution. For time-dependent problems, we also need initial solutions.
For our 2-D Cartisian problem, we use free slip boundary conditions (i.e., zero normal
velocity and zero shear stress) for the four sides of the box and isothermal boundary
condition for the top and bottom boundaries (i.e., T=0 and 1 at the top and bottom
respectively) and reflecting (or zero heat flux) boundary condition for the two sidewalls.
However, other type of boundary conditions are often used as well, such as prescribed
surface velocity or bottom heat flux.
Initial temperature is needed as an initial condition for the time-dependent energy
equation (unlike wave equations which require both initial displacement and velocity
to specify the solution because of their 2nd order derivatives with time, our energy
equation only has first order derivative with time and requires only one initial condition).
In thermal convection studies, often we are interested in steady state solutions by running
models for many time steps. Quite often, these steady state solutions (or statistically
steady state) are rather insensitive to initial conditions. In any case, here initial
temperature is given as T=z+d*cos(pi/L*x)*sin(pi/D*z).
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