Competition and bistability of ordered undulations and undulation chaos in inclined layer convection

Experimental and theoretical investigations of undulation patterns in high-pressure inclined layer gas convection at a Prandtl number near unity are reported. Particular focus is given to the competition between the spatiotemporal chaotic state of undulation chaos and stationary patterns of ordered undulations. In experiments, a competition and bistability between the two states is observed, with ordered undulations most prevalent at higher Rayleigh number. The spectral pattern entropy, spatial correlation lengths and defect statistics are used to characterize the competing states. The experiments are complemented by a theoretical analysis of the Oberbeck–Boussinesq equations. The stability region of the ordered undulations as a function of their wave vectors and the Rayleigh number is obtained with Galerkin techniques. In addition, direct numerical simulations are used to investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics. In the simulations, both ordered undulations and undulation chaos were observed dependent on initial conditions. Experiment and theory are found to agree well