An Approach for Suppressing Fluid Instabilities in Liquid Metal Battery with an Internal Structure

Abstract

The instabilities of fluid in the liquid metal battery (LMB) can easily cause a short circuit and lead to safety accidents, which have become a bottleneck in LMB industrial applications. In this case, a structure named grid-structure (GS) based on the inner cavity of the LMB has been used to suppress the fluid instabilities. Based on OpenFOAM-4 x numerical simulation, we analyzed the critical electric potential in basic structures, which is introduced as the threshold of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities. We constructed the GS with a different number of baffles. The simulation results show that the GS can effectively change the spatial distribution of the magnetic field and the flow field. And it can improve the charging/discharging efficiency and enhance the stability of LMB. Simulation results also show that the number of baffles has a positive relationship with the effect of suppressing the instabilities of MHD. This study helps determine the influencing factors of MHD instabilities and proves the universality of the GS.