Abstract
A finite volume numerical approach is developed and used to simulate convection-dominated melting and solidification problems. The present approach is based on the enthalpy-porosity method that is traditionally used to track the motion of the liquid-solid front and to obtain the temperature and velocity profiles in the liquid-phase. The enthalpy-porosity model treats the solid-phase as the porosity in all computational cells that are located on the solid-liquid interfacial boundary. Concerning the computational cells that are fully located in the solid side of the interfacial boundary, the zero value of the porosity severely suppresses the velocity vector to practically a non-existent value that could be set equal to zero. A comparative analysis with the previous numerical approaches is performed to demonstrate the improved features of the presented model. Results of a melting and solidification experiments are also used to assess and evaluate the performance of the model.