Forced flow reversal in ferrofluidic Couette flow via alternating magnetic field

Time-dependent boundary conditions are very common in natural and industrial flows and by far no exception. An example of this is the movement of a magnetic fluid forced due to temporal modulations. In this study, we used numerical methods to examine the dynamics of ferrofluidic wavy vortex flows (WVF2, with dominant azimuthal wavenumber m=2) in the counter-rotating Taylor–Couette system, which was subjected to time-periodic modulation/forcing in a spatially homogeneous magnetic field. In the absence of a magnetic field, all WVF2 states move in the opposite direction to the rotation of the inner cylinder, they are retrograde. However, when strength or frequency of the alternating magnetic field increases, the motion direction of the flow pattern changes. Thus, the alternating field provides a precise and controllable key parameter for triggering the system response and controlling the flow. Aside, we also observed intermittent behavior when one solution became unstable, leading to random transitions in both, the transition time and toward the different final solutions. Our findings suggest that, in ferrofluids, flow pattern reversal can be induced by varying a magnetic field in a controlled manner, which may have applications in the development of modern fluid devices in laboratory experiments. These findings provide a framework to study other types of magnetic flows driven by time-dependent forcing.