Transient Effect of Fluid Flow on Dendrite Growth Direction in Binary Fe-C Alloys Using Phase Field in OpenFOAM

An open-source fluid flow and phase-field coupled solidification model has been developed in OpenFOAM to investigate the transient nature of the interface growth direction at different degrees of undercooling for an Fe-0.15 wt.% C binary alloy under isothermal conditions. Though there are works on melt convection effects in binary alloys, none reported the transient nature of the dendrite growth direction since thermodynamic driving force decreases with time at a particular undercooling. Developing a theoretical relation will be helpful in understanding the competition between the crystallographic growth direction and solute transport. Flow decoupled simulation results have a good quantitative agreement with the literature. The bending angle formulations on the effects of flow velocity and growth speed were separated. At the end, improved theoretical formulations for estimation of the bending angle based on the anisotropy in interface energy were put forward compared with only few available empirical correlations.