Experiments on double-diffusive sugar-salt fingers at high stability ratio

A series of laboratory experiments was conducted to study the growth of double-diffusive salt fingers from an initial configuration of two homogeneous reservoirs with salt in the lower and sugar in the upper layer. For most of the experiments, the stability ratio was between 2.5 and 3, where the later value is at the upper limit for which fingers can exist. Results show that salt fingers can evolve in quite different ways depending on the initial stability ratio and must cast doubt on the use of simple similarity arguments to parameterize the heat and salt fluxes produced by fingers.