Columnar to Equiaxed Transition During Ingot Casting Using Ternary Alloy Composition

The present paper deals with the formation of macrosegregation in a benchmark ingot using (Fe-C-Cr) ternary alloy composition. The numerical investigation of complex multiphase phenomena is a difficult study, because the thermophysical properties depend strongly on the temperature, concentration, pressure and chemical composition as well. For the numerical modeling of solidification and melting processes different phases (e.g. liquid, equiaxed crystals and columnar dendrite trunks) have been considered. The mass, momentum, energy conservation and species conservation equations for each phase have been solved. The Eulerian-Eulerian model equations have been implemented in the commercial Finite Volume Method based FLUENT-ANSYS v6.3 CFD software using User-Defined Functions (UDF). The mass transfer has been modelled by diffusion controlled crystal growth by applying an advanced tip tracking algorithm for columnar solidification. The modeling of the grain density transport has been improved. The derivatives of the mass fraction quantities for each component appear in the nucleation rate term. It means that we obtain a new term of the right hand side of the grain density transport equation for using ternary alloy composition. This paper focuses on both the process and simulation parameters and their influence on the macrosegregation formation. The results show that the macrosegregation pattern does not change significantly above a well-chosen number of grid cells, and the computational time could be decreased, when the time step size has been increased.