A numerical method for the treatment of discontinuous thermal conductivity in phase change problems

Abstract

Presents a physical model for determining the effective thermal conductivity of a two‐phase composite medium with fixed or moving interfaces. A rigorous numerical method for removing oscillations in the thermal field is proposed. The methodology is based on the volume averaging technique with the assumption that the phases may coexist at a temperature different from that of fusion. The analysis reveals that the effective conductivity of a two‐phase medium is dependent on the phase volume fractions, on their thermal conductivities and on a constitutive constant which determines the geometric structure of the medium and the nature of the interface (fixed or moving). The results for the one and two dimensional conduction‐dominated phase change problem show that the oscillations produced by previous fixed‐grid methods are eliminated.

Citation

Laouadi, A., Lacroix, M. and Galanis, N. (1998), "A numerical method for the treatment of discontinuous thermal conductivity in phase change problems", International Journal of Numerical Methods for Heat & Fluid Flow, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 265-287. https://doi.org/10.1108/09615539810206348