Phase-field investigation of microstructure evolution under the influence of convection

Abstract

Numerical simulation of solidification and crystal growth has attracted industrial attention as a powerful engineering tool for processes and alloy optimization. In this work, we present a detailed study of the influence of flow on microstructure evolution during solidification. First, we include convection effects into an existing quantitative phase-field model that is meant to simulate dendritic growth of a binary alloy. We apply it to investigate the solidification of a Fe-Mn alloy under external flow conditions. In addition, we present an extension of the quantitative phase-field model of two-phase growth which includes natural and forced convection effects in the melt phase. We use this extension to investigate directional solidification of eutectic lamellae under the influence of convection as well as microstructure formation of peritectic growth in the presence of convection.

Keywords:

• dendritic growth
• eutectic growth
• peritectic growth
• crystal growth
• numerical simulation
• phase transformations

Notes

Notes

1. Here we consider ε _pβ to be always equal to zero.

2. The capillary length for each phase is defined as d _i = σ _iL T _R /L _i |m _i |ΔC, where L _i are the latent heats of fusion per unit volume, T _R is a reference temperature, and σ _iL are the solid–liquid surface tensions.