M. Prudhomme et al., NUMERICAL STUDY OF PHASE-CHANGE AROUND A ROTATING ISOTHERMAL CYLINDER, International journal of heat and mass transfer, 36(11), 1993, pp. 2837-2846
Melting around a rotating vertical cylinder heated at constant tempera
ture is being studied numerically. The problem is examined for a phase
change material of constant thermal properties, initially at the fusi
on temperature, confined between two horizontal fixed adiabatic planes
. Natural convection effects are left aside to study the coupling betw
een melting and the growth of Taylor vortices in a cavity with continu
ously decreasing aspect and annular ratios. The governing equations fo
r axisymmetric flow in the melt region are solved numerically, for sma
ll Stefan numbers, using body-fitted grids. As a consequence of the fi
nite cavity length, the growth of the cells is a smooth process. For s
mall Prandtl numbers, melting and rotation are uncoupled and the inter
face remains straight, but the number of cells found in the melt at an
y given time is generally different from that found in an identical ca
vity of fixed geometry. For a Prandtl number of order one, there is a
strong coupling between melting and the Taylor vortices and the interf
ace becomes highly distorted.