The Apparent Mass Capacity Method for Transient Diffusion Problems with Change of Phase

A numerical method for treating transient diffusion Involving change of phase is presented. In other methods of dealing with this class of problems, the mass flux balance at the moving phase boundary requires explicit treatment of two distinct phases. The technique, originating from the apparent heat capacity method in transient heat conduction with the phase change, avoids the difficulty by transferring the concentration discontinuity at the boundary to smoothed physical property variations near the moving front. This technique accomodates the nonlinearities which preclude use of analytical solutions. It was tested against known analytical solutions for simple cases and turned out to be quite accurate.