Morphological and convective instabilities during solidification

Linear stability theory is employed in the present analysis of flow stability between two vertical, infinite, rigid coaxial cylinders at different temperatures. These calculations have been prompted by, and are found to be in general agreement with, experiments on succinonitrile. A long, vertical cylinder sample of this material was heated so that a vertical melt annulus formed between the coaxial heater and the surrounding crystal/melt interface. Above a critical Grashof number of about 200, a helical crystal/melt interface formed which steadily rotated about the cylinder axis and whose wave speed was several orders of magnitude lower than the base flow velocity.