• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.1657-1668
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• 1998

In the analysis of a mushy solidification system with natural convection using a fixed grid method, the enthalpy method has been used to account for the release of latent heat. The variable viscosity, Darcy source, and hybrid methods have been employed for the velocity suppression in a mushy region. The choice of the values of solid viscosity and permeability constant in conjunction with the Darcy source term plays an important role in forming the location and shape of the phase boundaries. In this work the effects of these major parameters related to steady-state behavior in the system of mushy solidification are investigated through a simple test problem. The effective specific heat based on the spatial gradients of the enthalpy and temperature is adopted for the treatment of the release of latent heat. The effects of the Prandtl and Rayleigh numbers on the shape of mushy region are examined using the hybrid method.