A conducting fluid flow in a current-carrying channel in an applied transverse

For practical purposes, it is sometimes very important to provide a controlled flow of a conducting fluid within a channel in which a current is induced. Such control allows one to improve the characteristics of electrothermal equipment for melting, treatment, and pouring of molten metals in metallurgy and casting, especially of channel induction furnaces and devices with magnetodynamic pumps. The metal flow in such devices intensifies the mass and heat exchange between their channels and their baths as well as in the baths themselves. Due to such flows, the possibility arises to increase the value of the heat power per ton of the molten metal, which is one of the most important characteristics of melting equipment efficiency; to reduce the overheating of the metal inside the channels and thus increase their service life; to improve the homogeneity of the metal temperature and composition with the bath; and to speed up the melting and dissolution of solid additions, and the refining of the metal. Since such a flow ensures the circulation of molten metal in the channel-bath system of an MHD device, it is called hereafter circulating flow. For channel induction furnaces and MDP with single channels the only means to provide a unidirectional CF was, till now, to arrange asymmetric channel inlets which resulted in a disbalance of the electrically induced vortical forces. The intensity of such CF depends only on the inlet design and the value of the current in the channel. Therefore, the control of CF is limited: it is impossible to reverse the flow direction, to stir metal actively in the bath without intense heating, or to heat metal effectively without noticeable stirring. During studies of magnetodynamic pumps, it has been found that CF can occur if the channel is asymmetric in the section where an external magnetic field is applied