Convection of paramagnetic fluid in a cube heated and cooled from side walls and placed below a superconducting magnet: comparison between experiment and numerical computations

The magnetic convection of paramagnetic fluid is studied in a strong magnetic field. The fluid in a cubic enclosure is heated from one vertical wall and cooled from the opposite one. The fluid is the 80% mass aqueous solution of glycerol with 0.8 mol/kg concentration of gadolinium nitrate hexahydrate to make the working fluid paramagnetic. The small amount of liquid crystal slurry is added to the fluid in order to visualize the temperature profiles in a vertical cross-section. This system is placed directly below the solenoid of the superconducting magnet which is oriented vertically. The temperature of cold wall is constantly controlled by the water flowing from a thermostating bath. On the other hand, the hot wall is heated by a nichrome wire from a DC power supply. In the numerical computations, the configuration of the system is modeled to be as close as possible to the real system. The physical properties of the working fluid are used to compute dimensionless parameters in the numerical model and the computations are carried out for corresponding cases. Later, the numerical and experimental results are compared with each other