Flowrate Measurement in Turbulent Liquid Metal Channel Flow Using Time-of-Flight Lorentz Force Velocimetry:Experimental Investigations and Numerical Modeling

摘要

Lorentz force velocimetry(LFV)is a suitable non-contact technique to measure flow velocity and flowrates in electrically conducting high-temperature melts.LFV is based on the principles of magnetohydrodynamics:when an electrically conducting fluid passes the field lines produced by a magnet system,eddy currents are induced within the fluid.The interactions of the eddy currents with the magnetic field generate Lorentz forces.Using LFV the counterforce acting on the magnet system is measured.Such a flowmeter consists of a permanent magnet system and an attached digital force sensor.The force recorded by the flowmeter is proportional to the flowrate Q and depends on both the electrical conductivityσof the fluid and the spatial distribution of the applied magnet field B.However,in metallurgical applications,σis often unknown or fluctuates in time as it strongly depends on both temperature and composition of the melt.In the present paper we investigate a technique called Time-of-Flight Lorentz force velocimetry ToF LFV.In this technique,the flowrate can be determined by just cross-correlating the two force signals recorded by two flowmeters which are arranged one behind the other separated by a certain distance D.Sensing the passage of the triggered vortices,this ToF LFV measures the transit timeτof these vortices.Then we recalculate the velocity V according to the relation V=D/τ.We experimentally and numerically study turbulent liquid metal flow in the test facility EFCO(electromagnetic flow control channel)using the eutectic alloy GainSn as a test fluid.Our experiments show that this electromagnetic ToF LFV is well suited to determine the flow velocity and flowrate.The experiments are accompanied by numerical simulations using the commercial program package FLUENT.