Marangoni convection driven by thermocapillary and solutocapillary forces in the Fe-O alloy pool during the solidification or remelting process

Marangoni convection during the solidification or remelting process was investigated in a small pool of a liquid Fe-O alloy, by experiments and numerical simulations. Most of the studies of such a system, with a low Prandtl number but a high Schmidt number, have taken into account thermocapillary convection but have left the solutocapillary effect out of consideration. However, our experimental and numerical approaches revealed that solutocapillary convection also plays an important role in the generation of peculiar flow patterns with a single roll cell or two roll cells. The Marangoni convection observed was classified into at least four categories based on the thermocapillary and solutocapillary forces.