Towards a multiscale computational framework for simulating flow-mediated crystallization based on phase-field crystal formalisms

Abstract

We lay the foundation and framework for a multiscale approach for studying crystallization in the presence of flow by coupling the Structural Phase Field Crystal (XPFC) formalism with the Navier-Stokes equations. We discuss the numerical techniques and verify the formalism against previous attempts with the vanilla Phase Field Crystal (PFC) formalism. Moreover, with this new Hydrodynamically coupled Structural Phase Field Crystal (HXPFC) method, we discuss unreported global and local crystal microstructural transformation induced by the flow. The HXPFC method establishes a framework to predict more complex crystal structures while incorporating physics relevant to film coating flows.

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