Gas-kinetic scheme based phase-field method for numerical simulations of dendrite growth

Abstract

In this work, a numerical model coupling the gas-kinetic scheme (GKS) and phase-field (PF) method is established to simulate the equiaxed dendrites growth during pure melt solidification in two dimensions. In the proposed model, the GKS and the PF method are used to simulate the thermal flow field and the dendrite growth, respectively, and coupled through the source term of the temperature field. To validate the proposed formulation, the natural convection case in a closed square cavity and the growth case of equiaxed dendrites are adopted to verify the accuracy of the GKS and the GKS-PF coupled model, respectively. After that, the coupled model is applied to simulate the equiaxed dendrites growth during pure Ni solidification under diffusion and natural convection conditions. The numerical results show that the proposed model is an effective and reliable method for the numerical simulation of equiaxed dendrites growth of the pure metal solidification process.