Studies of interaction of convective flow with free dendritic growth

The interaction between convection and dendritic growth has been a subject of great interest in the area of material science for many years. The experimental observations have shown that convective motion in liquid may have a significant effect on dendritic growth, changing the growth velocity of the tip and the micro-structure pattern. The convective flow, in different cases, may be measured by the Reynolds number, Grashof number, or the parameter of density change during phase transition.In this paper, I shall discuss the effect of convective flow on steady axisymmetric dendritic growth from an undercooled pure melt and summarize the linear stability criterion for several typical cases.