Hydromagnetic Dynamo and Stability of Three-Dimensional Convective Flows in a Horizontal Layer of a Solution

The generation of a magnetic field by three-dimensional convective flows of a conducting Boussinesq fluid in a horizontal layer of a solution was reported. It was found that only cells in which both reflection symmetry relative to the horizontal midplane and symmetry in the horizontal directions were absent could generate a magnetic field. The fluid was confined between two free electrically conducting planes, x3 = 0 and x3 = 1 and the temperatures of the lower and upper boundaries were T1 and T2, respectively. An FFT-based spectral method was used, which showed its efficiency in investigating the bifurcations and classes of temporal regimes of spatially periodic hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) systems. The results showed that the presence of a magnetic field increases the importance of high harmonics for the velocity. The convective MHD regime was a two-frequency one, in which one of the base frequencies corresponds to the drift of the fields along the roll axis.