Is it important to account for heat transport and interfacial attachment kinetics when calculating the shape of directionally solidified drops?

We focus on the calculation of directionally solidified drop shapes used for estimation and verification of growth angle values. While estimation of the angle at the onset of solidification does not require knowledge of heat transport and interfacial kinetics, verification of this estimate does involve a detailed simulation which includes these phenomena and is also based on an assumption that the angle is a constant. Here we present results aimed at assessing the importance of including heat transport and interfacial attachment kinetics (when relevant) in the verification procedure. We find that, in all cases studied here, neglecting these phenomena may lead to errors of up to 2° in terms of a verified growth angle value. It is therefore obvious that, in the event that such an error cannot be tolerated, heat transport and (if necessary) interface attachment kinetics should be considered in the verification procedure.