Session GP1 - Poster Session IV.
POSTER session, Tuesday afternoon, October 30
Exhibit Hall B,
Knowledge of liquid metal surface waves and instabilities provides insight regarding turbulence in plasmas and the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model used to describe plasmas generally. Such work is also critical in the development of liquid lithium walls to be used in fusion reactors. The Liquid Metal Experiment (LMX) is designed to study magnetically induced damping of liquid gallium surface waves by driving such waves in the presence of a magnetic field. Previous work measured the dispersion relation and confirmed that a magnetic field aligned perpendicularly to the direction of wave propagation has no effect. Current work improves the experimental design to measure the damping effect of a magnetic field aligned parallel to the direction of wave propagation.