An Efficient 2-D Finite Element Procedure for Isothermal Phase Changes

An efficient finite element procedure is developed for the temperature and stress analyses of two-dimensional isothermal phase transformation problems such as solidification, melting, and solid-to-solid transformations, etc. This procedure uses adaptive remeshing along the element boundaries to track the discontinuities in the temperature gradient, the enthalpy, and the material properties, which exists across the phase transformation interface. The thermal stresses and the transient temperature distribution developed during solidification are calculated using this for several example problems. They are compared with the numerical and analytical solutions obtained for these problems by earlier investigators in order to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of this method, for the analysis of solidification problems, as well as its limitations.