On the validity of the exchange principle in rotatory electrothermoconvection

The electrothermoconvection in a rotating dielectric fluid layer heated from below (or above) is studied analytically using linear stability theory. First, we derive the necessary conditions for oscillatory motion when the fluid layer is heated from below and from above. Then as a consequence, sufficient conditions for the validity of the exchange principle are derived for the two configurations in terms of the parameters of the systems alone. The results hold for free boundaries for all wave numbers and for rigid boundaries with some restrictions. Further, the results for electrothermoconvection without rotation, rotatory Rayleigh–Bénard convection and Rayleigh–Bénard convection are also obtained as special cases which validate the existing results. To the best of author’s knowledge such results are not reported in the literature as far as the domain of electrothermoconvection studies is concerned.