Abstract
We present and validate a numerical technique for computing dendritic growth of crystals from pure melts. The solidification process is computed in the diffusion-driven limit. The mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian framework treats the immersed phase boundary as a sharp solid-fluid interface and a conservative finite volume formulation allows boundary conditions at the moving surface to be exactly applied. The case of discontinuous material properties is also computed. The results from our calculations are compared with two-dimensional microscopic solvability theory. It is shown that the method predicts dendrite tip details in good agreement with solvability theory. The ability of the method to treat the front as a sharp entity and therefore to respect discontinuous material property variation at the solid-liquid interface is also shown to produce results in agreement with solvability and with other sharp interface simulations.
