Phase-field simulation of dendritic solidification using a full threaded tree with adaptive meshing

• Main Authors: Yin Yajun, Zhou Jianxin, Liao Dunming
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Foundry Journal Agency 2014-11-01
• Series: China Foundry
• Subjects: solidification; phase-field model; full threaded tree; adaptive meshing
• Online Access: http://foundryworld.com/uploadfile/2014122352311701.pdf
• ISSN: 1672-6421; 1672-6421

Simulation of the microstructure evolution during solidification is greatly beneficial to the control of solidification microstructures. A phase-field method based on the full threaded tree (FTT) for the simulation of casting solidification microstructure was proposed in this paper, and the structure of the full threaded tree and the mesh refinement method was discussed. During dendritic growth in solidification, the mesh for simulation is adaptively refined at the liquid-solid interface, and coarsened in other areas. The numerical results of a three-dimension dendrite growth indicate that the phase-field method based on FTT is suitable for microstructure simulation. Most importantly, the FTT method can increase the spatial and temporal resolutions beyond the limits imposed by the available hardware compared with the conventional uniform mesh. At the simulation time of 0.03 s in this study, the computer memory used for computation is no more than 10 MB with the FTT method, while it is about 50 MB with the uniform mesh method. In addition, the proposed FTT method is more efficient in computation time when compared with the uniform mesh method. It would take about 20 h for the uniform mesh method, while only 2 h for the FTT method for computation when the solidification time is 0.17 s in this study.