A numerical model for steel continuous casting problem in a time-variable domain (Q2225850)

The authors discuss the numerical solution of a steel continuous casting problem in a domain \(\Omega \in \mathbb{R}^3\) which is variable in time. At first, the mathematical description of this problem by means of a Stefan problem with prescribed convection and nonlinear Robin boundary conditions is presented. Then, the discretization of that problem is described. A semi-discrete problem is constructed by approximating the transport part of the problem. Hereby the method of characteristics is used. This results in a system of elliptic boundary value problems for the computation of the temperature fields at the time levels. For the discretization of the elliptic problem on a fixed time level, the fictitious domain approach is used. The domain \(\Omega\) is embedded into a parallelepiped. For discretizing the boundary value problem in the parallelepiped, a finite difference approximation is used which is based on trilinear finite elements and the trapezoidal quadrature formula. At the end, the full discretization leads to a system of nonlinear algebraic equations.