Lorenz-like chaos in a partial differential equation for a heated fluid loop (Q1096487)

A set of partial differential equations is developed describing fluid flow and temperature variation in a thermosyphon with particularly simple external heating. Several exact mathematical results indicate that a Bessel-Fourier expansion should converge rapidly to a solution. Numerical solutions for the time-dependent coefficients of that expansion exhibit a transition to chaos like that shown by the Lorenz equations over a wide range of fluid material parameters.