Fixed-Grid Simulation of Convection-Dominated Melting in a Rectangular Cavity

Numerical solutions for the convection-dominated melting in a rectangular cavity are presented. The enthalpy-porosity model is employed as the mathematical model. This model is applied in conjunction with the EIT method to detect boundary movement in a phase changing environment. The absorption and evolution of latent heat during the phase change is dealt with by the enthalpy-based energy equation. This seems to be more efficient than resolving the temperature-based energy equation. The velocity switch-off, which is required when solid changes into liquid, is modeled by the porous medium assumption. For efficiency and simplicity of the solutions procedure, this paper proposes a simple algorithm, which iterates the temperature and the liquid fraction of the cells comprising the front layer. The numerical results agree reasonably well with the experimental data and other previous works using the transformed-grid system.