Melt convection in welding and crystal growth

Abstract: A parallel finite element code with adaptive meshing was developed and used to study three dimensional, time-dependent fluid flows caused by thermocapillary convection as well as temperature and dopant distribution in fusion welding and floating zone crystal growth.A comprehensive numerical model of the three dimensional time-dependent fluid flows in a weld pool had been developed. This model considered most of the physical mechanisms involved in gas tungsten arc welding. The model helped obtaining the actual chaotic time-dependent melt flow. It was found that the fluid flow in the weld pool was highly complex and influenced the weld pool’s depth and width. The physicochemical model had also been studied and applied numerically in order to simulate the surfactant adsorption onto the surface effect to the surface tension of the metal liquid in a weld pool.Another model, a three dimensional time-dependent, with adaptive mesh refinement and coarsening was applied for simulating the effect of weak flow on the radial segregation in floating zone crystal growth. The phase change equation was also included in this model in order to simulate the real interface shape of floating zone.In the new parallel code, a scheme that keeps the level of node and face instead of the complete history of refinements was utilized to facilitate derefinement. The information was now local and the exchange of information between each and every processor during the derefinement process was minimized. This scheme helped to improve the efficiency of the parallel adaptive solver.