Shrinkage induced flow and Free surface evolution during solidification of pure metal

Abstract

A numerical model is developed to study Shrinkage induced convection and free surface evolution caused by the density difference between the solid and liquid phases during the solidification of pure aluminium. For the analysis, a 2–D rectangular cavity field with aluminium melt undergoing solidification process is considered. Conservation of mass, momentum, and energy are formulated based on volume averaging technique and are solved using the SIMPLER algorithm. The free surface evolution is captured using the Volume of fluid (VOF) method. The proposed model focuses on predicting macro–scale shrinkage induced surface defects during the solidification process.