Axial Magnetic Field Effect on Taylor-Couette Flow

Abstract

This study is interested in the effect of an axial magnetic field imposed on incompressible flow of electrically conductive fluid between two horizontal coaxial cylinders. The imposed magnetic field is assumed uniform and constant. The effect of heat generation due to viscous dissipation is also taken into account. The inner and outer cylinders are maintained at different uniform temperatures. The movement of the fluid is due to rotation of the cylinder with a constant speed. An exact solution of the equations governing the flow was obtained in the form of Bessel functions. A finite difference implicit scheme was used in the numerical solution. The velocity and temperature distributions were obtained with and without the magnetic field. The results show that for different values of the Hartmann number, the velocity between the two cylinders decreases as the Hartmann number increases. Also, it is found that by increasing the Hartmann number, the average Nusselt number decreases. On the other hand, the Hartmann number does not affect the temperature.

Keywords

• Rotating cylinders
• viscous dissipation
• heat transfer
• magnetic field
• Bessel function
• finite difference.