Convection in confined layers of volatile liquids has been studies extensively under atmospheric conditions. Recent experimental results have shown that removing most of the air from a sealed cavity significantly alters the flow structure and, in particular, suppresses transitions between different convection patterns found at atmospheric conditions. To understand these results, we have formulated and numerically implemented a detailed transport model that accounts for mass and heat transport in both phases as well as the phase change at the interface. Numerical simulations show that, rather unexpectedly, noncondensables have a large effect on not only the buoyancy-thermocapillary flow at concentrations as low as one percent (which is much lower than those achieved in experiment), but also the transitions between the different flow patterns.
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