Magnetic fluids are widely used in the energy, pharmaceutical and aerospace industries. Their flow can be controlled by the use of an external magnetic field. The current work considers the process of deposit formation in such fluids under an external magnetic field. Initially the process of deposit formation was studied experimentally and the shapes of the deposits under varying operational conditions were determined. A Eulerian-Eulerian computational fluid dynamics model was developed in order to simulate the process and compare with the experimental results to understand the underlying mechanisms governing the size and shape of the deposit. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.