A numerical method to compute solidification and melting processes

Probabilistic models, generic numerical methods in probability and statistics (65C20) Crystals in solids (74N05) Thermodynamics of continua (80A17) Stefan problems, phase changes, etc. (80A22)

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Melting and solidification are important parts of manufactoring processes such as crystal growth, casting, welding, surface alloying, dip forming, spray coating and production of printed circuit electronics. Numerous experimental studies exist to quantify the change of location and shape of interfaces. The paper underlines the importance of numerical computations of flows with heat and mass transfer that occur when melting and solidification processes are present in materials. It is very important for correct numerical predictions that the formation of the interface between the liquid and solid faces is predicted in a thermodynamically correct way. This is occasionaly not the case because it is usualy felt that this requires complicated and time-consuming grid generations after each time step. The authors shows that this grid generation can easily be carried out and an interesting method has been developed to adapt the grid after each time step to the new interface location, taking the space conservation law fully into account. This fact also ensures that the numerical grid does not become distorted because of strong interface deformations. Taking it into account the paper describes a method well suited to numerically predict melting and solidification processes such as occur with sharp interfaces in many fields of engineering described above. It is worth to say that, the method described in these paper can be characterized as follows: {\parindent=5mm \begin{itemize}\item[1)] The presented algorithm considers two (or more) different domains for solid and liquid media and solves the corresponding conservation equations on generalized curvilinear coordinates, with a collocated variable arrangement. \item[2)] The movement of the interface is calculated from the Stefan condition and hence the algorithm allows a sharp interface between the solid and liquid phases. From this point of view this algorithm is thermodynamically consistent for phase change problems with pure substances. \item[3)] The algorithm allows for sliding the nodes on the interface in order to avoid grid clustering at some regions of the interface. This also allowed the generation of the numerical grid in both phases by simple algebraic mapping and hence the computational effort generally associated with the moving grid formulation is greatly reduced. \item[4)] The volume fluxes due to the movement of the numerical grid are calculated explicitly by satisfying the space conservation law and thereby the present algorithm avoids the inclusion of artificial mass sources in order to satisfy the mass conservation equation. \end{itemize}} This feature was not clearly shown in any of the earlier papers in this field. The authors also demonstrate the ability of the set-up computer code to solve complex thermofluid processes such as occur during crystal growth in Czochralski reactors. At the end the authors emphesize that the results obtained in this paper are encouraging and suggest the extension of the present method to three-dimensional melting and solidification processes.

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