THE EFFECT OF NATURAL-CONVECTION IN MASS-TRANSPORT MEASUREMENTS IN DILUTE LIQUID ALLOYS

A coupled scaling analysis-numerical simulation approach is carried ou t in order to quantify the effect of natural convection on the accurac y of diffusion coefficient measurements in dilute Liquid alloys. This effect is seen to scale with the square of the product of the Grashof and Schmidt numbers. Our results also indicate that the design of the experimental set-up should be optimized, especially in the case of spe cies such as liquid metal components, that often have low diffusion co efficients. The possibility of damping convection in electrically cond ucting fluids by means of an externally applied magnetic field is also briefly discussed.