Magnetically induced instabilities in duct flows

The occurrence of magnetically induced instability in magnetohydrodynamic duct flows is studied for Hunt flow, where one pair of walls parallel to the magnetic field is electrically insulating and the Hartmann walls perpendicular to the field are electrically conducting. The onset of time-dependent flow patterns and their intensity depends on the strength of the magnetic field and on the flow rate in terms of the Hartmann and Reynolds numbers, respectively. The problem is studied by a complementary approach using laboratory experiments, linear stability analysis and high-resolution direct numerical simulations.