Evolution of specific interface area during solidification: A three-dimensional thermosolutal phase-field study

Abstract

By developing a multilevel thermosolutal phase-field lattice-Boltzmann method, we achieve three-dimensional phase-field simulations of dendrite growth with realistic Lewis number (Le∼104) in equivalently over 108 uniform meshes. In addition to parallel computing and mesh adaptivity, the high-performance computing algorithm allows the time step enlarged by 2–3 orders of magnitude in an explicit scheme. Dependence of specific interface area, an integral measure of solidification microstructure, on time t and solid fraction fs is revisited including the t1/3 coarsening law and fsp(1−fs)q growth law (p and q are constants). The effect of latent heat on the evolution of specific interface area is evaluated, and such effect is equivalent to isothermal case or frozen-temperature approximation if Le exceeds 5000.