Deterministic physical influence control of interfacial motion in thermal processing of solidified materials

In this paper, a new experimental method of phase interface motion control with time dependent boundary cooling is presented for ice-water solidification problems. A numerical method for inverse heat transfer problems was developed to predict the transient boundary conditions, which produce a prescribed phase interface motion. In the experimental study, the predicted boundary temperatures from the numerical simulation were used to control the ice-water interface movement for various specified interface motions. Two cases of different phase interface velocities were considered. Water supercooling was observed during each experiment. A time delay in the thermal control was calculated based on an analytical solution. Close agreement between measured data and specified interface motion was achieved for the ice-water solidification problems.