The influence of magnetic fields on the convection of oxygen: The Glenda effect

A theoretical model is derived, ab initio, to quantitatively describe the natural convective heat transfer of a nonionized paramagnetic gas between parallel vertical plates of differing temperature subjected to a steady magnetic field having a small non-vanishing gradient. Owing to the sensitivity of the magnetic permeability with temperature, normal convective flow can be radically altered, even reversed by application of the proper magnetic field configuration. The result may be expressed quantitatively by a dimensionless group, the Glenda number, which characterizes the magneto-thermal contribution to the total heat transfer analogous to the gravity controlled Grashof number. This study differs from earlier work in that the presence of a magnetic field gradient is included. [...]