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Effects of horizontal magnetic fields on flow morphologies and global transports in liquid metal thermal convection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2024

Xin-Yuan Chen Open the ORCID record for Xin-Yuan Chen [Opens in a new window] ,
Juan-Cheng Yang Open the ORCID record for Juan-Cheng Yang [Opens in a new window]  and
Ming-Jiu Ni Open the ORCID record for Ming-Jiu Ni [Opens in a new window]
Xin-Yuan Chen
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, School of Aerospace, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China
Juan-Cheng Yang*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, School of Aerospace, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China
Ming-Jiu Ni*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory for Strength and Vibration of Mechanical Structures, School of Aerospace, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, PR China School of Engineering Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China
*
†Email addresses for correspondence: [email protected], [email protected]
†Email addresses for correspondence: [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

We report an experimental study of Rayleigh–Bénard convection of liquid metal GaInSn in a cuboid cell with an aspect ratio of 0.5 under the effect of a horizontal magnetic field. The Rayleigh number spans a range of $3.8\times 10^5 \leqslant Ra \leqslant 1.1\times 10^7$, while the magnetic field strength reaches up to 0.5 T, corresponding to a maximum Hartmann number to 2041. By combining temperature and velocity measurements, we identify several flow morphologies, including a novel cellular pattern characterized by four stacked vortices that periodically squeeze and induce velocity reversals. Based on the identified flow morphologies, we partition the entire ($Ra, Ha$) parameter space into five distinct flow regimes and systematically investigate the flow characteristics within each regime. The temperature gradient and oscillation frequency exhibit scaling relationships with the combined parameters $Ra$ and $Ha$. Notably, we observe a coupling between flow regime and global transport efficiencies, particularly in a regime dominated by the double-roll structure, which experiences a maximum 36 % decrease in heat transfer efficiency compared with the single-roll structure. The dependencies of heat and momentum transport on $Ra$ and $Ha$ follow scaling laws as $Nu \sim (Ha^{-2/3}RaPr^{-1})^{3/5}$ and $Re \sim (Ha^{-1}RaPr^{-1})^{4/3}$, respectively.

JFM classification

MHD and Electrohydrodynamics: Magneto convection
Type
JFM Papers
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Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 1000 , 10 December 2024 , A59
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© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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