Dendrite growth with arbitrary symmetry in the presence of convective heat and mass transfer boundary conditions

The dendritic form is one of the most common forms of crystals growing from supercooled melts and supersaturated solutions. In recent decades, an analytical theory has been developed that describes a stable dendrite growth mode under the conditions of a conductive heat and mass transfer process. However, in experiments, the growth of dendritic crystals is often observed under the conditions of convective fluid flow. In the present work, the theory of the growth of dendritic crystals is developed taking into account the convective mechanism of heat and mass transfer at the crystal-melt interface. A stable mode of dendritic growth in the case of intense convective flows near the steady-state growing dendritic tip is analyzed. The selection theory determining a stable growth mode in the vicinity of parabolic solutions as well as the undercooling balance condition are used to find the dendrite tip velocity and its tip diameter as functions of the melt undercooling. It is shown that the theoretical predictions in the case of convective boundary conditions are in agreement with experimental data for small undercoolings. In addition, the convective and conductive heat and mass transfer mechanisms near the growing dendritic surfaces are compared. Our calculations show that the convective boundary conditions essentially influence the stable mode of dendritic growth.