Research on the phase change phenomenon has gained increasing attention due to its extensive engineering applications in the fields of energy storage and release. In the semitransparent medium, the phase change process is accompanied by the transfer of internal radiation energy, which can significantly affect the distributions of temperature and liquid fraction. Based on the enthalpy model, this work develops the discontinuous Galerkin method (DGM) to solve the enthalpy equation (EE) and radiative transfer equation (RTE) that govern the phase change process. By comparing with the analytic solution and other numerical results, the correctness of the proposed DGM framework for solving coupled radiation and phase change problems is validated. Results reveal that the DGM can accurately capture the heat and mass transfer process in solidification problems. The proposed DGM is further extended to analyze the solidification problem within a two-dimensional cavity considering the radiation effect. Effects of Planck number, medium scattering albedo, and refractive index on the temperature and liquid fraction distributions as well as the mushy zone location are investigated. It is found that these parameters have important impacts on the solidification rate. This work provides accurate numerical solutions on phase change problems in the presence of radiation.
Read full abstract