Iterative numerical method for nonlinear moving boundary problem with a convective boundary condition

This paper studies a mathematical model of the phase transition process as a moving boundary problem (MBP). An equation describing the temperature-dependent thermal conductivity and Robin-type boundary condition at the fixed boundary is used in the model. In order to solve the considered MBP, we propose an iterative-based Keller box method (KBM) for the numerical approximation and boundary immobilization method (BIM) to immobilize the moving boundary. In addition, KBM incorporates nonlinearities in thermal conductivity and boundary conditions. We study the stability and consistency and found out that the scheme is second-order accurate in both time and space. A specific case having a similarity solution has been considered to validate the numerical scheme. Our numerical results show that the KBM is in good agreement with the similarity solution. In addition, the rate of convergence of the KBM scheme is two. Different parameters and temperature-dependent thermal conductivity are studied to determine how these affect the position of the moving boundary.