Plots of the magnetic, kinetic, internal and (normalised) total energy as a function of time for both the braided and twisted simulations. The, magnetic, kinetic and internal energy plots show the difference from their values at t = 0. In both cases the magnetic energy is converted into kinetic and internal energy. Two phases can be identified. The first is a rapid change as the magnetic is converted into kinetic energy and internal energy increase (t ∈ [ 0,0.1 ] for the braid and t ∈ [ 0,35 ] for the twisted field). In the second phase the kinetic energy levels off and then falls steadily, whilst the internal energy increases gradually. The loss of magnetic energy of the twisted field is larger than the braided field.