Buoyancy-driven convection in liquid metals subjected to transverse magnetic fields

Abstract

This study presents the numerical simulation of Navier-Stokes, energy and hydromagnetic equations to analyse two-dimensional natural convection of liquid metals subjected to transverse magnetic field. The spatio-temporal study shows that the oscillatory flow changes to steady fluid flow pattern with increase in intensity of applied magnetic field for a range of Rayleigh number (Ra) between 105 and 108. The strength of magnetic field governs the pattern formation as well as the amplitude of the velocities for any particular Rayleigh number in the above range. The amplitude of aperiodic oscillations of any dynamical variable at higher Ra gets significantly damped out, especially removal of low-power harmonics with increase in the strength of magnetic field through variation of Chandrasekhar number.