Cellular growth during rapid directional solidification: Insights from quantitative phase field simulations

In this paper, columnar cellular growth with kinetic effects including kinetic undercooling and solute trapping in rapid directional solidification of alloys was investigated by using a recent quantitative phase-field model for rapid solidification. Morphological transition and primary spacing selection with and without kinetic effects were numerically investigated. Numerical results show that doublon structure is an intermediate state in the primary spacing adjustment of cellular arrays. It was found that the inclusions of kinetic effects result in the increase of the solute in the solid phase and the solute enrichment in the interdendritic liquid channel. Moreover, predicted results indicate that the growth directions of the cellular arrays in rapid directional solidification with and without kinetic effects are independent of the Péclet number. Therefore, the kinetic effects play important roles in numerical simulations of the growth pattern selection and solute distribution during rapid solidification. Neglecting them will result in the inaccurately predicted results.