A Lagrangian meshfree model for solidification of liquid thin-films

In this paper, a new method to model solidification of thin liquid films is proposed. This method is targeted at applications like aircraft icing and tablet coating where the formation of liquid films from impinging droplets on a surface form a critical part of the physics of the process. The proposed model takes into account the (i) unsteadiness in temperature distribution, (ii) heat transfer at the interface between the solid and the surface, (iii) volumetric expansion/contraction and (iv) the liquid thin-film behaviour, each of which are either partly or fully ignored in existing models. The liquid thin-film, modelled using the Discrete Droplet Method (DDM), is represented as a collection of discrete droplets that are tracked in a Lagrangian sense. The height of the liquid film is estimated as a summation of Gaussian kernel functions associated with each droplet. At each droplet location, a solid height is also computed. The evolution of the solid height is governed by the Stefan problem. The flow of the liquid thin-film is solved just as in the case of DDM, while also taking into consideration the shape of the solidified region lying beneath the droplet. The results presented in this work show the reliability of the proposed model in simulating solidification of thin-films and its applicability to complex problems such as ice-formation on aircraft wings. The model has been verified for canonical problems that have analytical solutions. For the more complex problems of icing, the results of the model are compared with data from literature, without considering a background air flow. The comparison can be improved by coupling this model with suitable air flow solvers, as shown in the final test case.