Simulations of experimentally observed dendritic growth behavior using a phase-field model

An anisotropic phase-field model is used to simulate numerically dendritic solidification for a pure material in two dimensions. The phase-field model has been formulated to include the effect of four-fold anisotropy in both the surface energy and interfacial kinetics. The computations presented here are intended to model qualitatively experimentally observed dendritic solidification morphology. In particular, we simulate the growth into an undercooled melt of two dendrite tips which have formed as the result of a splitting event. The computation exhibits the competition between the two growing dendrite branches and the eventual predominance of one branch. Also, we simulate the effect of time-periodic forcing of an isolated dendrite tip on the mechanism of sidebranch formation. Although it is not yet computationally feasible to adequately verify convergence of the phase-field solutions, the phase-field simulations presented show many of the qualitative features observed in dendritic growth experiments.