Fully resolved simulations of drop solidification under forced convection

We present the fully resolved simulation results of a liquid drop solidifying on a cold plate in laminar forced convection by a front-tracking method that is combined with an interpolation technique to deal with the non-slip boundary condition at the solid surface. The drop is assumed to not slide or roll on the plate during solidification. The numerical results show that unlike free convection, forced convection results in asymmetric solidified drops whose centroid is moved to the direction of forced convection. Various parameters such as the Reynolds number Re, the Prandtl number Pr, the Stefan number St, the Capillary number Ca, the dimensionless temperature of the crossing gas flow θin, and the density ratio of the solid to liquid phases ρsl are varied to reveal their effects on the process. The effect of the growth angle ϕgr is also investigated. Increasing Re (in the range of 50-600) or Ca (in the range of 0.001-0.1), or decreasing any one of Pr (from 0.32 to 0.01), ρsl (from 1.2 to 0.8), ϕgr (from 20° to 0°) causes the solidified drop centroid to move more in the forced convection direction. However, the variation of θin (in the range of 0-4) or the drop position has a very minor effect on the solidified drop shape. The effects of these parameters on time for complete solidification are also studied.