Cellular automaton modeling of dendritic growth of Fe-C binary alloy with thermosolutal convection

Embedded the thermal and solutal buoyancy into the momentum conservation equation as an additional force term using the Boussinesq approximation, a 2D CA-FVM model is extended to simulate the dendritic growth with thermosolutal convection. The model is firstly validated by comparison of numerical predictions with the benchmark test of Rayleigh - Bénard convection and the analytical solutions of the stagnant film model for the free dendritic growth with thermosolutal convection, and good agreements between the numerical results with analytical solutions are obtained. Later, numerical simulations for both the equiaxed and columnar dendritic growth of Fe-0.82wt%C binary alloy with thermosolutal convection are performed. The results show that, for the equiaxed dendritic growth in an undercooled melt, the dendrite tip growth rapidly decreases from the high velocity to a relative low steady-state value. With the further growth of dendrite, the thermosolutal convection induced by the solute rejection and latent heat release is enhanced and four vortexes are developed between the dendrite arms. Thus, the asymmetries of the dendrite morphology, temperature and solute profiles are intensified. For the columnar dendritic growth with thermosolutal convection under the unidirectional solidification process, the thermosolutal convection transports the rejected solute downward and makes the solute enrich at the interdendritic region. The thermosolutal convection facilitates the upstream dendritic growth, but inhibits the downstream dendritic growth. Moreover, with the increase of deflection angle of gravity, the advection on the top region and the clock-wise vortex flow at the interdendritic region intensified, and finally the columnar dendrite morphology becomes more asymmetrical.