Optimal operation of alloy material in solidification processes with inverse heat transfer

A transient nonlinear inverse heat transfer problem arising from alloy solidification processes is considered. In practice, the solidus and liquidus interface motions and thus the mushy zone thicknesses are pre-given to control the material quality. To achieve the desired front motions, the required time-dependent boundary conditions have to be predicted on both mold sides simultaneously. In this study, the enthalpy method is used for the derivation of governing equations. Hence, the inverse problem will be solved only in a single spatial and temporal domain. The conjugate gradient method with adjoint equation is applied for the resulting minimization problem. The method is applied as comparison for pure material with other previous studies. Then, alloy material with different front velocities is set up to investigate the solidification process. The obtained results show a close agreement between the desired and computed front motions and mushy zone thickness.