Electromagnetically induced chaotic mixing in a pipe mixer

A numerical investigation is carried out to study the mixing by chaotic advection in an electromagnetically driven pipe mixer. It consists of a pipe with two inner electrodes which are energized alternatively. An externally applied magnetic field along the flow direction interacts with the local electric currents inducing a spatially varying electromagnetic body force in the model fluid. The system is an extension of Aref's blinking vortex model to three dimensions. The Lagrangian motion of passive tracer particles is numerically simulated to quantify the degree of stirring. The model predictions indicate that the chaotic mixingis strongly dependent on the modified Hartmann number, the electrode switching frequency and the electrode separation distance. A comparison with numerical simulation results obtained using a dimensional model with glass melt shows that the chaotic mixing behavior of the glass melt is very close to the non-dimensional model predictions. The computational results presented here will be useful for developing efficient glass melt homogenisation systems. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.