Phase Field Modeling of Microstructure Development in Microgravity

This newly funded project seeks to extend our NASA-sponsored project on modeling of dendritic microstructures to facilitate collaboration between our research group and those of other NASA investigators. In our ongoing program, we have applied advanced computational techniques to study microstructural evolution in dendritic solidification, for both pure isolated dendrites and directionally solidified alloys. This work has enabled us to compute dendritic microstructures using both realistic material parameters and experimentally relevant processing conditions, thus allowing for the first time direct comparison of phase field computations with laboratory observations. This work has been well received by the materials science and physics communities, and has led to several opportunities for collaboration with scientists working on experimental investigations of pattern selection and segregation in solidification. While we have been able to pursue these collaborations to a limited extent, with some important findings, this project focuses specifically on those collaborations. We have two target collaborations: with Prof. Glicksman's group working on the Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE), and with Prof. Poirier's group studying directional solidification in Pb-Sb alloys. These two space experiments match well with our two thrusts in modeling, one for pure materials, as in the IDGE, and the other directional solidification. Such collaboration will benefit all of the research groups involved, and will provide for rapid dissemination of the results of our work where it will have significant impact.