MHD Flow in Simple Cubic Periodic Array Geometry

The aim of this study is to investigate the behavior of liquid metal flow in Capillary Porous System (CPS) under strong external magnetic field. Overlapping simple cubic (SC) periodic array of electrically nonconductive spheres with diameter 6 mm and distance between spheres centers 5.6 mm is 3D printed from PLA filament. Flow of up to 50 ml/s of In-Ga-Sn in pore space in magnetic field of superconducting magnet up to 5T is investigated. Three orientations of magnetic field in relation to the main flow in SC cell are considered – colinear with main flow and perpendicular to it. The values of Reynolds, Hartmann and Stuart numbers in experiment are up to 1160, 90 and 350. The results indicate that parallel to the main flow orientation of magnetic field has little influence on the flowrate, while perpendicular orientation strongly reduces flowrate with dependence close to 1/Ha, which agrees well with ANSYS Fluent simulations in a unit SC cell, resembling results for channel flow in magnetic field.