We investigate the interfacial wave coupling dynamics in liquid metal batteries and their effects to the battery's operation safety. Similar to aluminum reduction cells, liquid metal batteries can be highly susceptible to magnetohydrodynamical instabilities that excite undesired interfacial waves capable to provoke short-circuits. However, in liquid metal batteries the wave dynamics is far more complex since two metal-electrolyte interfaces are present that may step into resonance. In the first part of this paper, we present a Potential analysis of coupled gravity-capillary interfacial waves in a three-layer battery model of cylindrical shape. Analytical expressions for the amplitude ratio and the wave frequencies are derived and it is shown that the wave coupling can be completely described by two independent dimensionless parameters. We provide a decoupling criterion clarifying that wave coupling will be present in most future liquid metal batteries. In the second part, the theory is validated by comparing it with multiphase direct numerical simulations. An accompanying parameter study is conducted to analyze the system stability for differently strongly coupled interfaces. Three different coupling regimes are identified involving characteristic coupling dynamics. For strongly coupled interfaces we observe novel instabilities that may have beneficial effects on the operational safety.

Liquid metal batteries (LMBs) are discussed today as a cheap grid scale energy storage, as required for the deployment of fluctuating renewable energies. Built as a stable density stratification of two liquid metals separated by a thin molten salt layer, LMBs are susceptible to short-circuit by fluid flows. Using direct numerical simulation, we study a sloshing long wave interface instability in cylindrical cells, which is already known from aluminium reduction cells. After characterising the instability mechanism, we investigate the influence of cell current, layer thickness, density, viscosity, conductivity and magnetic background field. Finally we study the shape of the interface and give a dimensionless parameter for the onset of sloshing as well as for the short-circuit.

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We present a novel experiment on interfacial wave dynamics in orbitally shaken cylindrical vessels containing two-and three fluid layers. The experiment was designed as a hydrodynamical model for both aluminum reduction cells and liquid metal batteries to gain new insights into the rotational wave motion driven by the metal pad roll instability. Different options are presented to realize stable and measurable multi-layer stratifications. We introduce a new acoustic measurement procedure allowing to reconstruct wave amplitudes also in opaque liquids by tracking ultrasonic pulse echoes reflected on the interfaces. Measurements of resonance curves and phase shifts were conducted for varying interface positions. A strong influence of the top and bottom walls were observed, considerably reducing wave amplitudes and eigenfrequencies, when the interface is getting close. Finally, measured resonance curves were successfully compared with an existing forced wave theory that we extended to two-layer interfacial waves. The comparison stresses the importance to carefully control the boundary condition at the contact line.

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