Investigation of The Thermocapillary Flow in A Liquid Bridge subject to A Non-uniform Rotating Magnetic Field

The effect of an external non-uniform rotating magnetic field (RMF) on the thermocapillary flow in a liquid bridge under microgravity is studied numerically. The thermocapillary flow subject to a non-uniform RMF (7mT, 25Hz) is investigated over a range of Marangoni numbers (15-40). The results indicate that, in comparison with the thermocapillary flow without the magnetic field, the maximum tangential velocity is greatly enhanced and the maximum axial velocity is reduced significantly due to the effect of the non-uniform RMF. As a consequence, the thermocapillary flow remains steady and approximately axisymmetric under the effect of the non-uniform RMF. These results demonstrate that a non-uniform RMF can be used as an effective method to control the thermocapillary flow.