A computational study of natural convection in a liquid-encapsulated molten semiconductor with a horizontal magnetic field

This paper treats the natural convection in a layer of boron oxide, called a liquid encapsulant, which lies above a layer of a molten compound semiconductor (melt) between cold and hot vertical walls in a rectangular container with a steady horizontal magnetic field B. The magnetic field provides an electromagnetic (EM) damping of the molten semiconductor which is an excellent electrical conductor but has no direct effect on the motion of the liquid encapsulant. This study uses a Chebyshev spectral collocation method to investigate the coupling between the natural convection in the boron oxide and melt.