Investigation to establish modelling and predictive methods for microstructure formation during freeze casting

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Britta Nestler; Dr.-Ing. Rainer Oberacker
• Subject Area: Thermodynamics and Kinetics as well as Properties of Phases and Microstructure of Materials
• Term: from 2010 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 160462612

Based on phase-field modelling of ice-water freezing, we aim to simulate the multiscale microstructure evolution of nanoscale ceramic particles and microscale ice lamellay by formulating appropriate great chemical potentials to describe the processes as binary solidification system. The challenge of multiscale modelling will be solved by employing a homogenization approach where thermodynamic energies are constructed to model the particle concentration. In large-scale 3D simulation, we intend to investigate the mechanisms of microstructure formation during freeze casting and to establish correlations between processing/material conditions (solidification velocity, particle sizes, particle distributions, solid phase fraction) and the morphology transitions from planar front, lamellae and isotropic structures. The simulation results are to be compared and validated by available experiments from the first funding period. The simulation studies allow to derive processing-microstructure correlation functions and to predict morphology types within a broad range of experimentally, hardly accessible parameter space.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants