Experimental and numerical studies of pressure drop in PbLi flows in a circular duct under non-uniform transverse magnetic field

•An indirect DP measurement approach for high-temperature LM MHD flow is developed.•Experiments and numerical simulations of PbLi MHD flow are performed.•Characteristics of DP in LM MHD flow under fringing magnetic field are studied.•Pressure distributions in LM MHD flow at entry and exit of magnet are different.

Experiments and three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulations are performed to investigate the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) characteristics of liquid metal (LM) flows of molten lead-lithium (PbLi) eutectic alloy in an electrically conducting circular duct subjected to a transverse non-uniform (fringing) magnetic field. An indirect measurement approach for differential pressure in high temperature LM PbLi is first developed, and then detailed data on pressure drop in this PbLi MHD flow are measured. The obtained experimental results for the pressure distribution are in good agreement with numerical simulations. Using the numerical simulation results, the 3D effects caused by fringing magnetic field on the LM flow are illustrated via distributions for the axial pressure gradients and transverse pressure differences. It has been verified that a simple approach for estimation of pressure drop in LM MHD flow in a fringing magnetic field proposed by Miyazaki et al. [22] i.e., a simple integral of pressure gradient along the fringing field zone using a quasi-fully-developed flow assumption, is also applicable to the conditions of the present experiment providing the magnetic interaction parameter is large enough. Furthermore, for two different sections of the LM flow at the entry to and at the exit from the magnet, it is found that the pressure distributions in the duct cross sections in these two regions are different.