Sequence of bifurcations of natural convection of air in a laterally heated cube with perfectly insulated horizontal and spanwise boundaries

Three consequent bifurcations of buoyancy convection in a laterally heated cube with perfectly thermally insulated boundaries are studied. With the growth Grashof number, flow becomes oscillatory unstable, then stability reinstates at larger further increase which finally unstable. It is shown that all three transitions result from an interaction between destabilizing centrifugal mechanism and stabilizing effect thermal stratification.