JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #114 - July 2017 - 57

A novel physics node for Nakamura crystallization kinetics

case of a flowing material, a convection term should be added to
Equation 1 and the coefficient form PDE and may require special
care to ensure stability.

Conclusions
Thermal crystallization is a phenomenon that appears in several multi-physical applications (forming processes, phase change
flow, energy storage...). Accurate modelling of the crystallization
(solidification) phenomenon is thus required. The Nakamura law
is used to determine standard crystallization kinetics.
In the presented work, a novel physics node was implemented
using the Physics Builder in COMSOL and solves the Nakamura
crystallization (a local ordinary differential equation). The new
physics node can be used in any time-dependent 0, 1, 2 or 3D
multiphysical COMSOL model. It makes it possible to compute
the field of degree of crystallization versus time.
The use of this new physics node was illustrated in a model example of the cooling and solidification of a thermoplastic composite
part.
More information:
www.polytech.univ-nantes.fr/ltn/fr/
www.comsol.com
Contact: Arthur.levy@univ-nantes.fr
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank his colleagues at LTN for the fruitful
discussions concerning thermo-kinetics coupling. Special thanks
goes to Steven le Corre, Vincent Sobotka, and Didier Delaunay.
References
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7-11 (2017)[9] X. Tardif, et al., Experimental study of crystallization
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N°114 July 2017

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #114 - July 2017
