This volume contains selected presentations of the 3rd International PAMIR Conference on Transfer Phenomena in Magnetohydrodynamic and Electroconducting Flows held at the Paul Langevin Centre in Aussois, France, in September 1997. The main scientific domain of the conference was the interaction between a magnetic field and a conducting fluid, which can be either an electrolyte (with low electrical conductivity) or a liquid metal (with high electrical conductivity). One of the perspectives of the conference was to facilitate the interaction between the MHD and chemical engineering communities. Thus, the connection between mass transfer in electrochemical systems and magnetic fields (sometimes called magnetoelectrolysis) was introduced for the first time as a topic of the conference. This offered a new class of problems to the MHD community. The presentations focused on four main topics related to interfacial heat and mass transfer phenomena, energetic applications, the dynamo effect and MEHD phenomena, and they encompassed both numerical and experimental studies.
The invited lectures were devoted to different subjects, such as the dynamo effect, magnetoelectrolysis, instability problems, and metallurgical applications of MHD. The state of the art was discussed together with promising new orientations. This book should be of interest to researchers and advanced graduate students in physics and engineering sciences, working in MHD and related areas.