Modelization of phase changes by fictitious‐heat flow

This paper presents an efficient algorithm to solve phase change problems. The first part gives the definition of the problem and mentions some practical applications. The second part analyses how to deal with phase changes by means of concentrated fictitious heat flows. The principles of the method are described and compared to those of other methods. The concept of ‘the area associated with a node’ is developed and some practical values for the weight coefficients are recommended. Conclusions are given about the convergence and the stability of the algorithm, and about the improvements obtained by prescribing the temperatures and using relaxation techniques. Theoretical and practical examples illustrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed method. Copyright © 1984 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd