Thermal Convection in the Presence of Internal Heating

Thermal convection in the presence of internal heat sources is an important mechanism of heat transfer in geophysics, particularly in planetary mantle convection. Carefully controlled laboratory studies of this mechanism are, however, scarce. We present experimental results on the effect of internal heating on Rayleigh-B\'{e}nard convection, where the heat sources are induced by IR absorption. The results are compared with available theoretical predictions.