Development and application of a heat balance integral method for analysis of metallurgical solidification

A heat balance integral method is developed for analysis of the unidirectional solidification of a binary eutectic alloy. This "semianalytical" technique can deal with problems which involve mushy phase change, superheat, and nonconstant thermal properties. Comprehensive testing against available analytical solutions is carried out. Applications to problems of metallurgical significance, beyond the scope of analytical solutions, are made. In these applications the performance of the proposed heat balance scheme is compared with predictions obtained with an explicit enthalphy numerical method. Results indicate for a wide range of problems the heat balance integral approach gives accurate predictions of governing solidification parameters up to 30 times more efficiently than the numerical method.