Ferrofluid Capillary Rise in Porous Medium under the Action of Non-Uniform Magnetic Field

TL;DR

This study investigates how non-uniform magnetic fields influence ferrofluid capillary rise in tubes and porous media, revealing that magnetic field direction affects rise speed and proposing a magnetic measurement method for porous material analysis.

Contribution

It introduces an experimental approach to analyze ferrofluid capillary dynamics under non-uniform magnetic fields and proposes a magnetic measurement technique to characterize porous media.

Findings

Magnetic field gradient accelerates or decelerates ferrofluid rise depending on its direction.

Time-dependent ferrofluid height and maximum height are quantified.

Porous material parameters can be extracted from magnetic measurements.

Abstract

The capillary flow of a ferrofluid in a single cylindrical capillary tube and through a sandy porous medium under the action of a non-uniform magnetic field is studied experimentally. The dynamics of the capillary rise and the static case have been considered. It has been shown that the non-uniform magnetic field with upward directed gradient accelerates the capillary rise; contrary, the non-uniform magnetic field with downward directed gradient decelerates the capillary rise. Time dependences of the ferrofluid height and maximum reachable height of ferrofluid have been analyzed. The method of the study of ferrofluid capillary rise based on the use of magnetic measurements has been proposed. It has been demonstrated that porous material parameters can be extracted from the results of measurements of the inductances of the solenoid with porous medium inside and the small sensing coil within a single experiment.