Experimental investigation of inertial waves inside a cylindrical liquid metal column

The dynamics of free inertial waves inside a cylindrical volume was investigated experimentally in this study. The liquid metal GaInSn was chosen as fluid in order to enable a contactless stimulation of the flow inside the cylinder by means of a rotating magnetic field which generates a supercritical rotating motion of the liquid. The experiment demonstrates that inertial waves may be excited spontaneously by turbulent structures in the rotating flow. The ultrasound Doppler velocimetry was used to record the flow structure and to identify the inertial waves occurring in the setup.