A fast, robust, and accurate operator splitting method for phase-field simulations of crystal growth

Abstract

In this paper we propose a fast, robust, and accurate operator splitting method for phase-field simulations of dendritic growth in both two- and three-dimensional space. The proposed method is based on operator splitting techniques. We split the governing phase-field equation into three parts: the first equation is calculated by using an explicit Euler's method. The second is a heat equation with a source term and is solved by a fast solver such as a multigrid method. The third is a nonlinear equation and is evaluated using a closed form solution. We also present a set of representative numerical experiments for crystal growth simulation to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. Our simulation results are also consistent with previous numerical experiments.