COMPUTATIONAL ENVIRONMENT FOR MICROGRAVITY MATERIALS PROCESSING SIMULATIONS

ACCURATE NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS SHOULD PROVIDE A POWERFUL TOOL FOR PLANNING MEANINGFUL EXPERIMENTS ON FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS. A COMPREHENSIVE, GENERAL-PURPOSE TOOL OR SIMULATION OF SPACE-BASED MATERIALS PROCESSING PROBLEMS WILLBE DEVELOPED USING THE NEKTON SPECTRAL-ELEMENT, GENERAL-GEOMETRY FLOW CODE. THIS TOOL WILL PERMIT THE OPTIMIZATION OF CONFIGURATIONS AND PARAMETERS REQUIRED FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS. IN PARTICULAR, THE FLOATING-ZONE MELT PROBLEM, WHICH IS CRITICAL FOR ECONOMICALLY AND REPRODUCIBLY INCREASING THE YIELD OF HIGH-QUALITY CRYSTALS, WILL BE MODELED. SUCH MODELING WILL INVOLVE ENHANCING THE NEKTON CODE TO HANDLE MARANGONI CONVECTION DUE TO VARIABLE SURFACE TENSION, ACCURATE IMPLEMENTATION OF TRIPLE-POINT CONDITIONS, RADIATIVE-HEAT TRANSFER, AND VOLUMETRIC HEATING. ACCURATE NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS SHOULD PROVIDE A POWERFUL TOOL FOR PLANNING MEANINGFUL EXPERIMENTS ON FUTURE SPACE MISSIONS. A COMPREHENSIVE, GENERAL-PURPOSE TOOL OR SIMULATION OF SPACE-BASED MATERIALS PROCESSING PROBLEMS WILLBE DEVELOPED USING THE NEKTON SPECTRAL-ELEMENT, GENERAL-GEOMETRY FLOW CODE. THIS TOOL WILL PERMIT THE OPTIMIZATION OF CONFIGURATIONS AND PARAMETERS REQUIRED FOR SPACE APPLICATIONS. IN PARTICULAR, THE FLOATING-ZONE MELT PROBLEM, WHICH IS CRITICAL FOR ECONOMICALLY AND REPRODUCIBLY INCREASING THE YIELD OF HIGH-QUALITY CRYSTALS, WILL BE MODELED. SUCH MODELING WILL INVOLVE ENHANCING THE NEKTON CODE TO HANDLE MARANGONI CONVECTION DUE TO VARIABLE SURFACE TENSION, ACCURATE IMPLEMENTATION OF TRIPLE-POINT CONDITIONS, RADIATIVE-HEAT TRANSFER, AND VOLUMETRIC HEATING.