Simulation of free dendritic crystal growth in a gravity environment

Abstract

In this paper we simulate the evolution and free particle motion of an individual nucleus that grows into a dendritic crystal. The melt flow and the convective heat transfer around the crystal are simulated as they settle due to gravity. There is an intricate coupling between the settling and the evolution of the crystal. The relative flow induced by the settling enhances the growth at the downward facing parts, which in its turn affects the subsequent settling motion.Simulations have been done in two dimensions using a semi-sharp phase-field model. The flow was constrained to a rigid body motion by using Lagrange multipliers inside the solidified part. The model was formulated using two different meshes. One is a fixed background mesh, which covers the whole domain. The other is an adaptive mesh, where the node points are also translated and rotated with the movement of the solid particle. In the latter, the dendritic growth is simulated by the semi-sharp phase-field method.