PF-LBM Modelling of Dendritic Growth and Motion in an Undercooled Melt of Fe-C Binary Alloy

Abstract

In the present study, a two-dimensional phase field model coupled with Lattice Boltzmann method (PF-LBM) is proposed to predict the dendritic growth and motion in the melt of Fe-C binary alloy, where the phase field method (PF) is used to calculate the dendritic growth, including the phase field and the concentration field, and the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is used to calculate the flow field. The dendrite motion is determined by Newton’s Second Law and tracked by Lagrangian point in a Cartesian coordinate system. Later, the model validations were performed with the benchmark of a solid particle settlement in a stagnant fluid and particle motion in a shear flow, and the results show that the present model is capable of predicting the solid particle motion in the fluid flow. Finally, the model is adopted to investigate the dendritic growth and motion in a forced fluid flow (laminar flow or rotational flow), and the dendrite settlement in a terrestrial environment. The results show that when the forced fluid flow is a laminar flow, the free dendrite would be driven to translate, and the relative velocity between the dendrite and flow fluid decreases, resulting in weak influence of fluid flow on the dendritic growth. When the forced fluid flow is a rotational fluid flow, the dendrite would centrifugally rotate on the domain center with a counterclockwise self-spinning, and the rotation radius becomes larger and larger. For the case of dendrite settlement in a terrestrial environment, the relative movement between the dendrite and melt promotes the downward branch growth, but inhibits the upward branch growth, and two vortices form at the wake region of dendrite. Therefore, the settling dendrite shows a significant asymmetrical morphology.