THE EFFECT OF NATURAL-CONVECTION IN MASS-TRANSPORT MEASUREMENTS IN DILUTE LIQUID ALLOYS

A coupled scaling analysis-numerical simulation approach is carried out in order to quantify the effect of natural convection on the accuracy of diffusion coefficient measurements in dilute Liquid alloys. This effect is seen to scale with the square of the product of the Grashof and Schmidt numbers. Our results also indicate that the design of the experimental set-up should be optimized, especially in the case of species such as liquid metal components, that often have low diffusion coefficients. The possibility of damping convection in electrically conducting fluids by means of an externally applied magnetic field is also briefly discussed.