Adaptive collocation method for simultaneous heat and mass diffusion with phase change

The present study is carried out to determine melting rates of a lead slab of various thicknesses by contact with sodium coolant and to evaluate the extent of penetration and the mixing rates of molten lead into liquid sodium by molecular diffusion alone. The study shows that these two calculations cannot be performed simultaneously without the use of adaptive coordinates which cause considerable stretching of the physical coordinates for mass diffusion. Because of the large difference in densities of these two liquid metals, the traditional constant density approximation for the calculation of mass diffusion cannot be used for studying their interdiffusion. The use of orthogonal collocation method along with adaptive coordinates produces extremely accurate results which are ascertained by comparing with the existing analytical solutions for concentration distribution for the case of constant density approximation and for melting rates for the case of infinite lead slab