Abstract: Phase-field model is used to simulate the growth and morphological evolution of single intact equiaxed dendrite during its solidification in supercooled melt, the governing equations of the phase-field model are solved with adaptive finite element method, and the influence of physical parameters such as anisotropy and supercooling degree on the dendrite shape and growth under condition of larger computational domain and less interfacial layer thickness. The result shows that a competition will occur more intensively among the dendrites and their growth speed will be less when the supercooling degree is greater. However, the greater the anisotropy coefficient is, the stronger the dendrite growth tendency along a chosen direction will be, the faster the growth speed will be, the less the secondary dendrite spacing will be, and the more developed the lateral branch will be. Compared with the finite difference method (FDM), the adaptive finite element method (AFM) will reduce CPU time and storage space by one order of magnitude, and the larger the system size is, the more obvious the superiority of adaptive finite element method will be, which will facilitate the numeric simulation of greater dimensional and multi-field coupled phase field. By means of comparing to FDM and previous numerical simulation of crystal growth, the AFM is proved to be accurate, efficient and robust.

Key words: equiaxial dendrite, adaptive finite element, numerical simulation, phase-field model