Numerical simulations of materials processing

摘要

This research was concerned with the application of numerical simulation to a variety of materials processes, both in low gravity and terrestrial environments. The advent of fast supercomputers, together with the development of efficient numerical algorithms for the solution of the governing nonlinear partial differential equations have made this approach a complementary, and sometimes even an attractive alternative for traditional experimental methods presently used in development of new materials. This is especially true for the design and analysis of space-bound experiments, whose costs may exceed many millions of dollars per experiment. The overall purpose of the work was to develop and apply novel numerical techniques to the solution of several problems of interest to NASA concerning the processing of key materials important for the semiconductor industry and to the development of high temperature materials and coatings. The major accomplishment over the period of this cooperative agreement was the development of a general purpose simulator for the computations of crystal growth in space and ground experiments. This package was designed for ease of use and modularity for different experiments. The program was based on the FIDAR computer code which is a package that was available because of its use in the Computational Materials Laboratory at LeRC.