On the numerical modelling of heat transfer during solidification processes

An extensive amount of work has been published on the treatment of heat transfer associated with phase change. A few recent advances are discussed in this paper with some emphasis on the phase change of metals. The apparent capacity, effective capacity, enthalpy, post iterative, source based and semi-analytical methods are discussed and relative advantages and disadvantages of each are analysed. Recent developments in nodelling the flow during pouring and natural convection with applications of two widely used convective liffusive codes, the Los Alamos MAC and the Imperial College TEACH, are presented. An alternative tream function–vorticity approach is also discussed. Applications of these methods to turbulent convection during mould filling and continuous casting are presented. Areas of interest for further research work are identified as modelling of turbulence in liquid metals, flow through mushy regions and improvement of the performance of weak methods in multidimensional problems when the ratio of latent heat to sensible heat is large.