Effect of Diffusion Length in Modeling of Equiaxed Dendritic Solidification under Buoyancy Flow in a Configuration of Hebditch–Hunt Experiment

Abstract

Modeling of equiaxed solidification is vital for understanding the solidification process of metallic alloys. In this work, an extended literature review is given for the models currently used for equiaxed solidification simulations. Based on this analysis, we present a three-phase multiscale equiaxed solidification model in which some approximations regarding solute transport at microscopic scale are put together in a new way and incorporated into macroscopic transport equations. For the latter, a term relating to the momentum exchange between the two phases is revised, and a modification for the grain packing algorithm is proposed. A modernized model for equiaxed dendrite growth is tested using a case of solidification of Sn-5 wt pct Pb alloy in a parallelepiped cavity that mimics the Hebditch–Hunt experiment. The results obtained using two approaches to calculate diffusion length are presented and compared both with each other and with numerical results from elsewhere. It is demonstrated that diffusion length has a crucial effect on the final segregation pattern.