Convective instabilities in ternary alloy solidification

Daniel M. Anderson

Department of Mathematical Sciences, George Mason University

Applied and Computational Mathematics Division, NIST

Binary and multicomponent alloy solidification occurs in many industrial materials science applications as well as in geophysical systems such as sea ice. These processes involve heat and mass transfer coupled with phase transformation dynamics and can involve the formation of mixed phase regions known as mushy layers.  The understanding of transport mechanisms within mushy layers has important consequences for how these regions interact with the surrounding liquid and solid regions.  Through linear stability analyses and numerical calculations of mathematical models, convective instabilities that occur in solidifying ternary alloys will be explored.  Novel fluid dynamical phenomena that are predicted for these systems will be discussed.