The impacts of magnetic fields on the thermocapillary convection in two layers fluid system

Abstract

Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, South Africa, 1-4 July, 2007.

Under a horizontal temperature gradient along the liquidliquid interface, the developing processes of thermocapillary convection in two layers immiscible fluids system absent gravity were simulated numerically, where the upper layer fluid was encapsulant B2O3, the underlayer fluid was melting InP in this paper. The effects of different direction magnetic field on the developing behaviors of thermocapillary convection were investigated. The results showed that the flow pattern was changed obviously and the thermocapillary convection was damped in some extent and the temperature distributions became more uniform if magnetic fields in X, Y or Z direction were applied. Z direction magnetic field had a stronger effect on the thermocapillary convection and it was enough to suppress convection significantly at Bz between 0.15T and 0.2T. The simulation became numerically unstable when Bz was over 0.2T.