Inertial Effects on Thermochemically Driven Convection and Hydromagnetic Dynamos in Spherical Shells

Abstract:

Mechanisms of rotating convection play a fundamental role in the generation of the Earth's magnetic field. In order to get a better understanding of these mechanisms, we investigate the isolated problems of rotating thermal,chemical and thermochemical convection, and then thermally, chemically and thermochemically driven hydromagnetic dynamos in spherical shells. The underlying model equations describe the evolution of the flow, thermal and compositional fields in the first case, and flow, thermal, compositional and magnetic fields in the second case within the Boussinesq approximation. A uniform distribution of heat sources within the shell are assumed. The effects of solidification at the inner core boundary are accounted for by prescribing the latent heat and solutal fluxes at the bottom of the shell. In the limit of small Ekman and Prandtl numbers, we provide asymptotic results for the onset of convection and dynamos, in which case the system can be approximated to leading order by an inertial-wave convection and dynamos. The full set of governing equations is then solved numerically.