THE PHASE FIELD METHOD TO PERFORM SIMULAT IONS OF THE MICROSTRUCTURALEVOLUTION DURING SOLIDIFICATION

Many materials and workpieces arise from the melt by solidification. D uring the solidification process, a microstructure evolves which has m ajor influence on material's properties. Therefore the objective of a large number of investigations in material's sciences is to act in a c ontrolable manner on the microstructural evolution during solidificati on. To reduce the experimental effort, computer simulation methods are asked for. The phase field method is developed to perform simulations of the microstructural evolution with spatial resolution. In future t he method allows computer aided optimization of the solidification pro cess of technical alloys. As a first example, the solidification of pu re silicon in a silicon ingot solidification process is presented. Ano ther example is the simulation of a peritectic reaction similar to per itectic reactions in Ti-Al alloys.