Visualization of the global flow structure in a modified Rayleigh-Bénard setup using contactless inductive flow tomography

Abstract Rayleigh-Benard convection is not only a classical problem in fluid dynamics but plays also an important role in many metallurgical and crystal growth applications. The measurement of the flow field and of the dynamics of the emerging large-scale circulation in liquid metals is a challenging task due to the opaqueness and the high temperature of the melts. Contactless inductive flow tomography is a technique to visualize the mean three-dimensional flow structure in liquid metals by measuring the flow induced magnetic field perturbations under the influence of one or several applied magnetic fields. In this paper, we present the first measurements of the flow induced magnetic field in a Rayleigh-Benard setup, which are also used to investigate the dynamics of the large-scale circulation. Additionally, we investigate numerically the quality of the reconstruction of the three-dimensional flow field for different sensor configurations.