MHD Turbulence in spin-down flows of liquid metals

Understand

Intense spin-down flows allow one to reach high Rm in relatively small laboratory setups using moderate mass of liquid metals.

• The spin-down flow in toroidal channels was the first flow configuration used for studying dynamo effects in non-stationary flows.
• In this paper, we estimate the effect of small-scale dynamo in liquid metal spin-down flows realized in laboratory experiments.
• Our simulations have confirmed the conclusion that the dynamo effects observed in the experiments done on gallium are weak -- a slight burst of small-scale magnetic energy arises only at the highest available rotation velocity of the channel.