A numerical method to compute solidification and melting processes

Abstract

This paper deals with thermodynamically consistent numerical predictions of solidification and melting processes of pure materials using moving grids. Till date, enthalpy-porosity-based formulations of numerical codes have been generally the popular choice, although because of an artificial numerical smearing of the interface, it is virtually impossible to reproduce a sharp melting/solidification front that is supposed to exist for phase changes of pure substances. Numerical techniques based on moving grid methods have been relatively less used as they rely on complex and time-consuming adaptive grid generations. Using the moving grid approach, the authors present a method to solve solidification and melting problems. A simple linear interpolation is used to slide grid nodes along the interface to handle the otherwise obtained grid skewness near the interface. The numerical approach employed is validated with standard test cases available in the literature. The capability of capturing very complex flow field structures and the superiority of the present approach over enthalpy-porosity-based formulations is discussed. 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.