Modeling Coupled Heat and Mass Transfer in Drying Capillary Hygroscopic and Non-Hygroscopic Porous Materials

摘要

This work deals with the development of continuum thermodynamic modeling capabilities for application to investment casting shell-mould drying. An improved unstructured vertex-centered edge-based finite volume algorithm is employed for this purpose. Enhancements include reformulation of boundary integral flux-averaging as well as the use of a compact stencil in the computation of diffusive terms. A notable increase in accuracy is demonstrated. As the determination of material properties describing the shell material is still underway, the formulation is validated through the simulation of non-hygroscopic and hygroscopic particulate capillary materials for which the material characteristics are known. Predicted results are shown to compare well with experimental data.