A coupled domain–boundary type meshless method for phase-field modelling of dendritic solidification with the fluid flow

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to simulate the dendritic growth in Stokes flow by iteratively coupling a domain and boundary type meshless method.Design/methodology/approachA preconditioned phase-field model for dendritic solidification of a pure supercooled melt is solved by the strong-form space-time adaptive approach based on dynamic quadtree domain decomposition. The domain-type space discretisation relies on monomial augmented polyharmonic splines interpolation. The forward Euler scheme is used for time evolution. The boundary-type meshless method solves the Stokes flow around the dendrite based on the collocation of the moving and fixed flow boundaries with the regularised Stokes flow fundamental solution. Both approaches are iteratively coupled at the moving solid–liquid interface. The solution procedure ensures computationally efficient and accurate calculations. The novel approach is numerically implemented for a 2D case.FindingsThe solution procedure reflects the advantages of both meshless methods. Domain one is not sensitive to the dendrite orientation and boundary one reduces the dimensionality of the flow field solution. The procedure results agree well with the reference results obtained by the classical numerical methods. Directions for selecting the appropriate free parameters which yield the highest accuracy and computational efficiency are presented.Originality/valueA combination of boundary- and domain-type meshless methods is used to simulate dendritic solidification with the influence of fluid flow efficiently.