Numerical Analysis of Magnetic Field and Heat Transfer of a Reciprocating Magnetocaloric Regenerator Using a Halbach Magnet Array

Abstract

Abstract In this study, a numerical model of a reciprocating magnetocaloric regenerator using a Halbach magnet array is developed in ansys-fluent software. The model consists of three components, namely, (i) the Halbach magnet array, (ii) the magnetocaloric material (MCM), and (iii) the heat transfer fluid. A two-dimensional (2D) domain is studied due to the axisymmetric geometry of the physical model. A pressure difference is defined between the inlet and outlet sections of the fluid domain to maintain a reciprocating fluid flow. In the proposed computational scheme, a segregated approach is followed to consider the spatial distribution of the magnetic field in the thermal analyses. Therefore, a 2D magnetic field within the MCM is computed using an analytical approach at first, and its results are integrated into ansys-fluent with a user-defined function (UDF). Hydrodynamic and heat transfer characteristics of the proposed regenerator model are evaluated under various Reynolds numbers and cycle durations. Moreover, the temperature drop at the cold side of the regenerator is represented in terms of the pressure difference, flow duration, and the diameter of Gadolinium (Gd) as the MCM. For the current geometrical configurations, it is observed that the magnetic field varies from 0.4 T to 1 T within Gd. The highest temperature spans are measured as 8.4 K, 7.5 K, and 7.2 K numerically for the cycle durations of 1.2 s, 2.2 s, and 4.2 s, respectively.