Destabilization of a liquid metal by nonuniform Joule heating.

We study the effect of an impressing AC magnetic field at the bottom of a liquid metal layer of thickness h. In this situation the fluid is set in motion by the buoyancy forces caused by internal heat sources. The heat sources, caused by the Joule effect induced by the AC field, present an exponentially decaying profile, with characteristic length δ.

Magnetoconvection transient dynamics by numerical simulation.

We investigate the transient and stationary buoyant motion of the Rayleigh-Bénard instability when the fluid layer is subjected to a vertical, steady magnetic field. For Rayleigh number, Ra, in the range 10-10, and Hartmann number, Ha, between 0 and 100, we performed three-dimensional direct numerical simulations. To predict the growth rate and the wavelength of the initial regime observed with the numerical simulations, we developed the linear stability analysis beyond marginal stability for this problem.