Low-mach simulations of convective helium shell burning in a massive star

Movies of 2D slices through the 3D simulations for a 25 Msol main-sequence star.

The left panel shows the Mach number to illustrate the flow morphology.

The right panel the deviation of a passive scalar from its mean value

in the bulk of the convection zone to illustrate the mixing processes at the upper boundary of the

convection zone.

The two movies show the same initial setup, but have a grid-resolution of 180x90^2 and 810x540^2 cells, respectively. The energy generation rate from helium burning has been boosted by a factor of 10^4 in both simulations.