A TEMPERATURE-BASED FORMULATION FOR FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF GENERALIZED PHASE-CHANGE PROBLEMS

A finite element formulation for solving multidimensional phase-change problems is presented. The formulation considers the temperature as the unique state variable, it is conservative in the weak form sense and it preserves the moving interface condition. In this work, an approximate jacobian matrix that preserves numerical convergence and stability is also derived. Furthermore, a comparative analysis with other different phase-change finite element techniques is performed. Finally, several numerical examples are analysed in order to show the performance of the proposed methodology.