Interactions between a cavitation bubble and solidification front under the effects of ultrasound: Experiments and lattice Boltzmann modeling

The phenomena of melting and dendritic fragmentation are captured by using an in-situ device during the ultrasound-assisted solidification of a succinonitrile-acetone (SCN-ACE) alloy. The experimental results show that the dendrite arms detach from primary trunk due to the melting of the solid phase, which is caused by a moving ultrasound cavitation bubble. To quantify the interactions between the ultrasound cavitation bubble and the solidification front, a coupled lattice Boltzmann (LB) model is developed for describing the fields of temperature, flow, and solid fraction, and their interactions. The multi-relaxation-time (MRT) scheme is applied in the LB model to calculate the liquid-gas flow field, while the Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook (BGK) equation is executed to simulate the evolution of temperature. The kinetics of solidification and melting are calculated according to the lever rule based on the SCN-ACE phase diagram. After the validation of the LB model by an analytical model, the morphologies of the cavitation bubble and solidification front are simulated. It is revealed that the solidification interface melts due to the increase of the temperature nearby the cavitation bubble in ultrasonic field. The simulated morphologies of the cavitation bubble and solidification front are compared well with the experimental micrograph. Quantitative investigations are carried out for analyzing the melting rate of the solidification front under different conditions. The simulated data obtained from LB modeling and theoretical predictions reasonably accord with the experimental results, demonstrating that the larger the ultrasonic intensity, the faster the melting rate. The present study not only reveals the evolution of the solidification front shape caused by the cavitation bubbles, which is invisible in the ultrasound-assisted solidification process of practical alloys, but also reproduces the complex interactions among the temperature field, acoustic streaming, and multi-phase flows.