Numerical Study of Turbulent Natural Convection in Presence of a Constant Magnetic Field in a Square Enclosure

In this paper, the effect of a constant magnetic field on flow field, temperature field, and heat transfer in steady state turbulent natural convection in a square enclosure filled with liquid metals has been numerically investigated. The left and right walls of enclosure are hot and cold respectively and horizontal walls are adiabatic. The effect of variations of Rayleigh number between 107 and 109 and Hartmann number between 0 and 600 on natural convection of liquid metals with Prandtl numbers 0.011, 0.022 and 0.054 has been investigated using the standard k-ε turbulence model. According to the results, when a magnetic field is introduced, the convection strength is suppressed and by increasing Hartmann number, temperature gradient near the vertical walls diminishes. Also by increasing Prandtl number, the maximum absolute value of stream function as a criterion of flow strength is increased.