A NUMERICAL STUDY FOR INWARD SOLIDIFICATION OF A

LIQUID CONTAINED IN CYLINDRICAL AND SPHERICAL VESSEL

by
RAJEEV and Subir DAS
*
De part ment of Ap plied Math e mat ics, In sti tute of Tech nol ogy, Banaras Hindu Uni ver sity,
Varanasi, In dia
Orig i nal sci en tific pa per
UDC: 66.040.36:517.518.82:536.24
DOI: 10.2298/TSCI1002365R
This study pres ents a nu mer i cal so lu tion of in ward so lid i fi ca tion of phase change
ma te rial con tained in cyl in der/sphere. Here, con stant ther mal prop erty is as sumed
through out the anal y sis for the liq uid, which is ini tially at fu sion tem per a ture. The
gov ern ing dimensionless equa tions of the above prob lem and bound ary con di tions
are con verted to ini tial value prob lem of vec tor ma trix form. The time func tion is
ap prox i mated by Chebyshev se ries and the op er a tional ma trix of in te gra tion is ap -
plied. The so lu tion is uti lized iteratively in the in ter face con di tion to de ter mine the
time taken to at tain a fixed in ter face po si tion.
Key words: inward solidification in cylindrical/spherical region, moving
interface, Chebyshev polynomial, operational matrix
In tro duc tion
So lid i fi ca tion prob lems have ap pli ca tion in many fields of sci en tific and tech no log i cal
endeavour. They are in ter est ing both be cause of di ver sity of their ap pli ca tion and be cause of
their non-lin ear ity, which is as so ci ated with the mov ing in ter face. Due to pres ence of mov ing in -
ter face and non-lin ear ity, the ex act so lu tion of these prob lems are lim ited and re stricted only for
a few spe cific cases [1-3]. Very few an a lyt i cal so lu tions to the so lid i fi ca tion prob lems are avail -
able. Hill [4] sum ma rized some tech niques for an a lyt i cal so lu tion and se ries so lu tion for so lid i -
fi ca tion prob lems. Some ap prox i mate an a lyt i cal so lu tions for in ward so lid i fi ca tion in cy lin dri -
cal/spher i cal re gion are dis cussed in [5-8].
Be side an a lyt i cal meth ods, nu mer i cal so lu tions are more com mon and com puter in ten -
sive. Hence many nu mer i cal meth ods have been de vel oped. In 1967, Tao [9] de vel oped a nu -
mer i cal method for the so lid i fi ca tion prob lem of a sat u rated liq uid con tained in cy lin dri cal or a
spher i cal con tainer. Voller et al. [10] pre sented an ex plicit al go rithm to ob tained the so lid i fi ca -
tion and melt ing time in cir cu lar re gions. They as sumed first kind of bound ary con di tion
(Dirichlet bound ary con di tion). An im plicit fi nite dif fer ence method based on the enthalpy
method for the anal y sis of phase change prob lem was re ported by Voller [11]. Caldwell et al.
[12] ap plied a nu mer i cal method based on the enthalpy method to spher i cal so lid i fi ca tion. The
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372 365
* Corresponding author; e-mail: subir_das08@hotmail.com
re sults are com pared to the re sults ob tained by the heat-bal ance method. Ismail et al. [13] re -
ported a nu mer i cal study for spher i cal so lid i fi ca tion by us ing fi nite dif fer ence ap prox i ma tion
and mov ing grid ap proach. They an a lyzed the ef fect of the size, thick ness and ma te rial of the
con tainer and the ex ter nal wall tem per a ture on the so lid i fi ca tion rate. Ismail et al. [14] pre sented
a nu mer i cal study for the spher i cal so lid i fi ca tion un der con vec tive bound ary con di tions. In
2005, Bilir et al. [15] have re ported the re sults of nu mer i cal study of in ward so lid i fi ca tion prob -
lem of a phase change ma te rial en cap su lated in cyl in der/sphere con tainer. Third kind of bound -
ary con di tion (Robin bound ary con di tion) is as sumed. They have used enthalpy method with
con trol vol ume ap proach. Re cently, Assis et al. [16] pre sented nu mer i cal and ex per i men tal
study of so lid i fi ca tion in a spher i cal shell.
In the pres ent study, a nu mer i cal so lu tion of in ward so lid i fi ca tion of a liq uid con tained
in cyl in der/sphere is re ported. The dimensionless dif fer en tial equa tions gov ern ing the above
pro cess are con verted into ini tial value prob lem by us ing cen tral dif fer ence op er a tor. The time
func tion is ap prox i mated by Chebyshev se ries of the sec ond kind and op er a tional ma trix of in te -
gra tion is ap plied [17] on it. The so lu tion of ini tial value prob lem is uti lized iteratively in the in -
ter face con di tion to de ter mine the time taken to cover a given in ter face po si tion. The re sults are
pre sented through fig ures.
Math e mat i cal for mu la tion
Con sider a cy lin dri cal/spher i cal ves sel filled with a mol ten
ma te rial at an ini tial tem per a ture, which is its freez ing tem per -
a ture. At t = 0, the bound ary is cooled by im pos ing a con stant
tem per a ture T
0
which is lower than T
f
. As time pro ceeds the
mol ten ma te rial will even tu ally so lid ify. The ge om e try of the
prob lem is de picted in fig. 1.
The fol low ing as sump tions are con sid ered here:
the density change from liquid to solid is ignored,
thermal properties of solid and liquid are equal,
the thermal resistance of the vessel is negligible, and
the heat transfer process inside the vessel is only by
conduction in radial direction.
Un der this as sump tion the dy nam ics of freez ing can be de -
scribed by the fol low ing equa tion:

T
t r r
r
T
r
t r R
n
n
=

< <
a
l , ( )
0
(1)
with, n = 1 and 2 for cy lin dri cal and spher i cal con fig u ra tion, re spec tively. The as so ci ated ini tial
and bound ary con di tions are spec i fied as:
T = T
f
at t = 0 (2)
T = T
0
at r = R (3)
The en ergy bal ance at the so lid i fi ca tion front can be writ ten as:
T = T
f
at r = l
0
(t) (4)
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
366 THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of
freezing process in cylinder/
/sphere co-ordinates
k
T
r
L
t
t
r t

= r
l
l
d
d
at
0
0
( )
( ) (5)
l
0
(0) = R (6)
where a is the ther mal diffusivity, k the ther mal con duc tiv ity, r the den sity, l
0
(t) the lo ca -
tion of in ter face, and L the la tent heat of the so lid i fi ca tion.
So lu tion of the prob lem
In tro duc ing the dimensionless vari ables [6] and sim i lar ity cri te ria:
x
r
R
S
c T
L
t
R
tk T
LR
T T
T
= = = = =
-
, ,
( )
, , ,
D D
D
l
l
t
r
q
0
2
0
(7)
where DT = T
f
T
0
.
The sys tem of the eqs. (1)-(6) re duces to the form:
S
x x
x
x
n
n

q
t
q
=

1
(8)
q(1, t) = 0 (9)
q(l, t) = 1 (10)
q(x, 0) = 1 (11)

l
t
q
l t = =
x
x at ( ) (12)
l(0) = 1 (13)
Re plac ing the do main [1, 0] [0, 4] by a rect an gu lar grid of points (x
i
, t
i
) with
x
i
= ih i = 0, 1, 2,..., k+1
t
j
= iDt j = 0, 1, 2, ...
where h = 1/(k+1), and Dt is the discretization step for the nor mal ized time vari able. Tak ing
discretization in the space vari able x only. By us ing cen tral dif fer ence, the eqs. (8)-(11) can be
writ ten in vec tor ma trix form as:
d
d Sh
q
q
t
+ =
-1
2
2
A B (14)
q'(0) = [1, 1, 1, ......, 1]
/
(15)
where
q
q
q
q
q
=

=
+

1
2
3
2
0
0
0
2
2
M
M
M
M
k
k
k
B
x hn
Sh x

Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidifi cation of a Liquid Contained ...
THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372 367
A =
- +

- + - +

4 2 0 0 0 0 0
2 4 2
1
2 2
hn
x
hn
x
hn
x
....
....
....
0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 2 4 2
1 1
K K K K K K
K K K K K K
- + - +

- -
hn
x
hn
x
k k

0 0 0 0 0 2 4 ....
hn
x
k
In te grat ing eq. (14) and us ing the eq. (15),we ob tain:
q t q q
t t
( ) ( ) ( ) - = +

0 1
0 0
A B x x x d d (16)
The ap prox i ma tion of q(t) by Chebyshev se ries gives:
q(t) = DF(t) (17)
1 = EF(t) (18)
where
D =
d d d
d d d
d d d
m
m
11 12 1
21 22 2
1 2
KK
KK
KK
KK
KK
.. .. ..
.. .. ..
k k km

d
ij
(i = 1, 2, 3, ..., k; j = 1, 2, 3, ..., m) are the Chebyshev coefficients of matrix D,
E = [1, 0, 0, 0, ......., 0]
1m
and
F f f f f
m
m
=
-
[ , , , , ]
/
0 1 2 1
1
KK
f
i
is Chebyshev poly no mial of sec ond kind such that:
f
f
f
0
1
2
2
1
2 4
3 16 16
=
= -

= -

t
t
t
t
t
t
*
* *
M
M
f f f
j j j + -
= -

1 1
2 1 2
t
t
t
t
* *
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
368 THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372
More over, in te gra tion of the Chebyshev vec tor gives:
F y y F ( ) ( ) d =

P t
t
0
(19)
where P is the op er a tional ma trix of in te gra tion, t
*
the gen er al ized time, and
P =
-
-
-
t
*
1
2
1
4
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3
8
0
1
8
0 0 0 0 0 0
1
6
1
12
0
1
12
0 0 0 0 0
KK
KK
KK
M M M L KK M M M M
M M M M KK M M M M
KK
1
2 1
0 0 0 0 0
1
4 1
0
1
4 1
1
( ) ( ) ( ) m m m - -
-
-
2
0 0 0 0 0 0
1
4
0
m m
mm
KK

Sub sti tut ing eqs. (17) and (18) in eq. (16) and us ing eq. (19), we ob tained:
DF = ADPF + BEPF
Since the Chebyshev poly no mial are in de pend ent, equat ing the co ef fi cients of F(t)
gives the fol low ing set of linear al ge braic equa tions:
D ADP = BEP (20)
Now, we look for the nor mal ized time in which the in ter face moves a dis tance l. The
re gion (0, l) is di vided into k + 1 equal parts or sub re gions. Re plac ing the space de riv a tive by
us ing back ward op er a tor in the in ter face con di tion (12) and in te grat ing it with l(0) = 1, we ob -
tain:
l t t h
t
( ) [ ( ) ] = + -

1
1
0 h
y y
i
d (21)
where i = 0, 1, ......., k
By as sum ing a fixed value of t
*
, the el e ments of the ma trix D whose or der is k m are
com puted from eq. (20). Re plac ing h
i
by d f
ij j j
m
- =

1 1
and tak ing t/t
*
= 1, the eq. (21) be comes:
t
l
=
-
- +

h
d d
i i
( ) 1
1
1
3
1 3
(22)
which gives the re quired time in which the phase front is at a dis tance l.
Nu mer i cal re sults and dis cus sion
In this sec tion, we pres ent the nu mer i cal re sults of the dimensionless time taken to
cover a dis tance l(t) and de ter mi na tion of melt frac tion with reference to dimensionless time in
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372 369
cy lin dri cal and spher i cal ge om e tries. The com pu ta tions have been made for fixed val ues of t
*
=
= 10
2
and m = 3.
Fig ures 2 and 3 de pict the de pend ence of in ter face lo ca tion on dimensionless time for
three val ues of Stefan num bers S = 0.75, 1.5, 5.0 [8, 12, 18]. It can be seen from the fig ures that
the ve loc ity of in ter face is slower for higher val ues of Stefan num bers for both cy lin dri cal and
spher i cal cases. More over, the ve loc ity of in ter face de creases as it ap proaches the cen tre. One
can also ob serve that the so lid i fi ca tion pro cess is slow in case of sphere than the cy lin dri cal case
for par tic u lar value of S. It is also seen from the fig ures that the dimensionless time for the com -
plete so lid i fi ca tion in case of the cyl in der is more than that of spher i cal case. This re sult is in
com plete agree ment with the re sults of Prudhomme et al. [6] and Lin et al. [8].
Fig ures 4 and 5 rep re sent the de pend ence of melt frac tion on dimensionless time for a
fixed value of Stefan num ber (S = 5.0) for cy lin dri cal and spher i cal so lid i fi ca tion, re spec tively.
Ac tu ally, melt frac tion is de fined as the ra tio of melted mass and to tal mass of the phase change
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
370 THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372
Figure 2. Plot of t vs. l(t) for cylindrical
solidification
Figure 3. Plot of t vs. l(t) for spherical
solidification
Figure 4. Plot of melt fraction vs. t for cylindrical
solidification
Figure 5. Plot of melt fraction vs. t for spherical
solidification
ma te rial. Thus, the melt frac tion is zero when so lid i fi ca tion is com plete. It is clear from both fig -
ures that to tal time re quired to com plete so lid i fi ca tion is higher for the case of cyl in der in com -
par i son with to tal time for the spher i cal case. The trend of the re sult in fig. 5 for spher i cal case is
sim i lar to the re sult of Assis et al. [16].
Con clu sions
We have pre sented a nu mer i cal tech nique to solve in ward so lid i fi ca tion prob lem in cy -
lin dri cal and spher i cal ge om e try. It can be seen that the pro posed method is ef fi cient, user
friendly and ac cu rate to de ter mine the so lu tion of mov ing bound ary prob lems. In view of rapid
con ver gence of the Chebyshev se ries of sec ond kind, only a few terms of the se ries are needed to
give sat is fac tory re sults. The au thors strongly be lieves that the pro posed method will be help ful
to the en gi neers who are work ing in the area of so lid i fi ca tion.
Ac knowl edg ment
The au thors are thank ful to the re view ers for their valu able sug ges tions for the im -
prove ment of the ar ti cle.
Ref er ences
[1] Carslaw, H. S., Jae ger, J. C., Con duc tion of Heat in Sol ids, Clar en don Press, Lon don, 1959
[2] Lunardini, V. J., Heat Trans fer in Cold Cli mates, van Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, USA, 1981
[3] Ozisik, M. N., Heat Con duc tion, 2
nd
ed., John Wiley and Sons, New York, USA, 1993
[4] Hill, J., One-Di men sional Stefan Prob lem, An In tro duc tion, Longman Sci en tific and Tech ni cal, Essex,
UK, 1987
[5] Shih, Y. P., Tsay, S. Y., An a lyt i cal So lu tion for Freez ing a Sat u rated Liq uid In side and Out side Cyl in der,
Chem. Engg. Sci., 26 (1971), 6, pp. 809-816
[6] Prudhomme, M., Nguyen, T. H., Nguyen, D. L., A Heat Trans fer Anal y sis for So lid i fi ca tion of Slabs,
Cyl in ders and Sphere, Jour nal of Heat Trans fer, 111 (1989), 3, pp. 699-705
[7] Feltham, D. L., Garside, J., An a lyt i cal and Nu mer i cal So lu tion De scrib ing the In ward So lid i fi ca tion of a
Bi nary Melt, Chem. Engg. Sci., 56 (2001), 7, pp. 2357-2370
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372 371
No men cla ture
c specific heat, [Jkg
1
K
1
]
D coefficient matrix-vector
d
ij
Chebyshev coefficients of matrix D
F Chebyshev matrix-vector
k thermal conductivity, [WK
1
m
1
]
L latent heat of fusion, [Jkg
1
]
R position of the fixed boundary, [m]
r position in the solidified region, [m]
S Stefan number (= cDT/L), []
T temperature distribution, [K]
t time, [s]
x normalized position (= r/R), []
Greek let ters
a thermal diffusivity, [m
2
s
1
]
q normalized temperature distribution
[= (T T
0
)/DT], []
l
0
interface position, [m]
r density [kgm
3
]
t dimensionless time (= tkDT/rLR
2
)
Sub scripts
0 at fixed boundary, r = R
f freezing
Su per script
* generalized
/ transpose
[8] Lin, S., Jiang, Z., An Im proved Quasi-Steady Anal y sis for Solv ing Freez ing Prob lem in a Plate, a
Cyllinder and a Sphere, J. Heat Trans fer, 125 (2003), 6, pp. 1123-1128
[9] Tao, L. C., Gen er al ized Nu mer i cal So lu tions of Freez ing a Sat u rated Liq uid in Cyl in ders and Spheres,
AIChE Jour nal, 13 (1967), 1, pp. 165-169
[10] Voller, V. R., Cross, M., Es ti mat ing the So lid i fi ca tion/Melt ing Times of Cy lin dri cally Sym met ric Re -
gions, Int. J. Heat and Mass Trans fer, 24 (1981), 9, pp. 1457-1462
[11] Voller, V. R., Fast Im plicit Fi nite Dif fer ence Method for the Anal y sis of Phase Change Prob lems, Nu mer i -
cal Heat Trans fer, B 17 (1990), 2, pp. 155-169
[12] Caldwell, J. D., Chan, C. C., Spher i cal So lid i fi ca tion by the Enthalpy Method and Heat Bal ance In te gral
Method, Ap plied Math e mat i cal Mod el ing, 24 (2000), 1, pp. 45-53
[13] Ismail, K. A. R., Henriques, J. R., So lid i fi ca tion of PCM In side a Spher i cal Cap sule, En ergy Con ser va tion
and Man age ment, 41 (2000), 2 , pp. 173-187
[14] Ismail, K. A. R., Henriques, J. R., T. Da Silva, M., A Para met ric Study on Ice For ma tion in side a Spher i cal
Cap sule, Int. J. Ther mal Sci ence, 42 (2003), 9, pp. 881-887
[15] Bilir, L., Ilken, Z., To tal So lid i fi ca tion Time of a Liq uid Phase Change Ma te rial En closed in Cy lin dri -
cal/Spher i cal Con tain ers, Ap plied Ther mal En gi neer ing, 25 (2005),10, pp. 1488-1502
[16] Assis, E., Ziskind, G., Letan, R., Nu mer i cal and Ex per i men tal Study of So lid i fi ca tion in a Spher i cal Shell,
ASME J. Heat Trans fer, 131 (2009), 2, pp. 1-5
[17] Liu, C. C., Shih, Y. P., Anal y sis and Pa ram e ter Iden ti fi ca tion of Lin ear Sys tems via Chebyshev Poly no mi -
als of Sec ond Kind, Int. J. Sys tem Sci., 16 (1985), 6, pp. 753-759
[18] Parida, P. R., et al., So lid i fi ca tion of a Semitransparent Pla nar Layer Sub jected to Ra di a tive and Con vec -
tive Cool ing, J. Quan ti ta tive Spec tros copy & Ra di a tive Trans fer, 107 (2007), 2, pp. 226-235
Paper submitted: May 24, 2009
Paper revised: December 3, 2009
Paper accepted: December 12, 2009
Rajeev, et al.: A Numerical Study for Inward Solidification of a Liquid Contained ...
372 THERMAL SCIENCE: Year 2010, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 365-372