Abstract
Liquid metals and magnetic fields are used in many technical applications such as metallurgy, crystal growth and nuclear fusion reactors. When an electrically conducting fluid moves in a magnetic environment, electric currents and electromagnetic forces are generated that affect velocity and pressure losses in the flow. These magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) interactions have to be investigated to optimize the engineering processes. The characteristics of MHD flows depend on the geometrical configuration, the strength of the applied magnetic field, the electrical properties of fluid and structural materials and the thermal conditions. In the so-called blankets for fusion reactors, where liquid metals are used to breed the plasma fuel component tritium and to extract the generated heat, magneto-convective flows play a crucial role in determining heat and mass transfer. Therefore, the availability of numerical codes to simulate this type of flow is mandatory and their validation is a necessary step to guarantee the reliability of the results. For that reason, a benchmark problem has been defined to simulate liquid metal flows in a horizontal rectangular duct heated from below and exposed to a non-uniform magnetic field. Results obtained by five research groups using different codes are compared.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 116006 |
| Journal | Nuclear Fusion |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 1 2025 |
Funding
This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium, funded by the European Union via the Euratom Research and Training Programme (Grant Agreement No. 101052200—EUROfusion). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.This work was partially supported by the computing facilities of Extremadura Research Centre for Advanced Technologies (CETA-CIEMAT), funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERFD). CETA-CIEMAT belongs to CIEMAT and the Government of Spain.ORNL acknowledges financial support from US DOE under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725. The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting the paper for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (www.energy.gov/doe-public-access-plan).Sapienza University authors acknowledge that the computational resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff [21]. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes, see www.cresco.enea.it/english for information.
Keywords
- benchmark
- code-to-code comparison
- fusion blankets
- liquid metals
- magneto-convection