Control of flow geometry using electromagnetic body forcing

This paper presents conceptual experiments and simulations aiming at control-ling flow geometries. Such flow design is performed by driving electromagneti-cally a shallow layer of brine, the forcing being generated by a transverse electri-cal current and different combinations of permanent magnets placed underneath the brine supporting wall. It is shown how different basic flow characterisctics can be obtained with a single pair of magnets, by varying the angle with the electrical current. These basic flows are proposed as potential building blocks for advanced and complex flows studies. Three typical flow structures are pre-sented to illustrate these building blocks. The discussion is then extended to multi-scale geometry by using blocks of various sizes. The flow is analysed using complementary experiments and numerical simulations. A good agreement is found between the 3D simulations and the experiments for both velocity and acceleration fields, which allows a higher degree of confidence in designing and modelling such flows. As the control of the flow geometry is important for mix-ing, in particular at low Reynolds number, we also illustrate the different stirring properties of the electromagnetically forced flows by comparing visualisations of passive scalars. They reveal complementary mixing properties for each of the building blocks