An efficient method for coupling microscopic and macroscopic calculations in solidification modelling

An approximate method for the coupling of microscopic and macroscopic models of solidification is proposed, which can be easily implemented in present simulation codes. The method is based on an iterative scheme where the output of one model serves as input to the other and vice versa. If compared to the original approach, the computational effort is significantly reduced. It is sufficient to carry out only two detailed microsimulations no matter how large the number of volume elements in the heat dow calculation is. The method is applied to the solidification of an Al-12 wt% Mg plate casting. While the results of heat flow simulations using either the lever rule or the Scheil equation to determine the release of latent heat differ significantly from the original approach, the results of the proposed method are nearly identical.