The oscillation and collective behavior of convective flows is studied by a computational fluid dynamics approach. More specifically, the rising dynamics of heated fluid columns is simulated in gravitational field using a simplified 2D geometry. The numerical method uses the FEniCS package for solving the coupled Navier–Stokes and heat-diffusion equations. For the flow of a single heated fluid column, the effect of the inflow yield and the nozzle diameter is studied. In agreement with the experiments, for a constant nozzle diameter the oscillation frequency increases approximately linearly as a function of the the flow rate, while for a constant flow rate the frequency decreases as a power law with the increased nozzle diameter.