SOME FEATURES OF 2 COMMERCIAL SOFTWARES FOR THE MODELING OF BULK CRYSTAL-GROWTH PROCESSES

Two commercial codes, FIDAP and MARC, have been used to model a number of crystal growth processes in collaboration with industrial and rese arch teams. Examples of global and local simulations in the field of h eat transfer, hydrodynamics, chemistry and mechanics are given and the results are compared to experimental measurements, with good agreemen t as a rule. This establishes that such codes can be used to help impr ove crystal growth processes, while full global transient models still belong to software specifically written in order to model crystal gro wth. Emphasis is put on the necessity to validate the numerical result s by comparison with experiments and to have a clear understanding of the physical laws hidden behind the software.