Ventilated filling-box relaxation (${\tau }_h,{\tau }_b$)

For total plume flux $P(h)$, fixed ceiling exhaust $F$, zero ambient buoyancy, and uniform upper-layer reduced gravity $b$, the ideal two-layer balances areAt $P(h_{\ast })=F$ and $b_{\ast }=B/F$, linearization yields the decay times ${\tau }_h=A/P^{\prime }(h_{\ast })$ and ${\tau }_b=A(H-h_{\ast })/F$. For $P(h)\propto h^{5/3}$, ${\tau }_h=3A{h}_{\ast }/(5F)$. Upper-layer buoyancy relaxation usually dominates when $h_{\ast }\ll H$. Exact equilibrium is approached asymptotically; a fixed small relative tolerance takes order $\max ({\tau }_h,{\tau }_b)\log (1/\epsilon )$ after the initial transient.