T. Pusztai, L. Rátkai, L. Horváth et al.

Acta Materialia 227 (2022) 117678

Fig. 3. (a), (b), (c) Snapshots of the steady state melting of lamellar eutectic structures with an initial α : β phase ratio of 0.45 : 0.55. This ratio corresponds to an off-eutectic
mean composition of c0 = 0.05. Each panel consists of 11 snapshots which are from 11 simulations performed with increasing domain width. The difference of the α and
β lamella heights depends strongly on the value of the temperature gradient but only weakly on the lamellar spacing. (d) If the tip positions are translated to temperature
values, the results of the three sets of simulations collapse onto the same curves, suggesting that the phase with sub-eutectic amount melts at TE , whereas the phase with
super-eutectic amount melts at TE + 0.05, which is its liquidus temperature at c0 = 0.05.

Fig. 4. Steady state melting of lamellar eutectic structures obtained with λ/λJH = 1.5, lT /ld = 2, while varying the α : β phase ratio. (a) Composition maps of steady state
simulations performed with c0 = −0.05, −0.04, . . . , 0.05. Note that by changing the initial phase ratio and thus the average composition of the solid, the composition of the
melt also changes. (b) The corresponding temperature taken at the tips of the α and β lamellae.

Fig. 6. Phase-field prediction of the thin lamellae breaking up into small discon-
nected particles during melting, a process resembling “spherodisation” seen in the
experiments. This figure is rotated clockwise by 90 degrees. The width of the sim-
ulation domain is decreased to λ/λJH = 0.6 and then the melting speed was in-
creased by a factor of 10. Five subsequent snapshots from the simulation are shown.
Time is increasing from top to bottom.

Fig. 5. Small oscillations around the trijunction during melting of a lamellar struc-
ture with λ/λJH = 4, lT /ld = 2 and c0 = 0.03. Three subsequent snapshots from the
same oscillation cycle is shown. Time is increasing from left to right.
ing whether it is a finite size effect) or decreasing the interface
width (improving the convergence of the model).
Another example, where non-steady melting was observed falls
to the opposite side of the investigated λ/λJH range and to higher
melting speeds. As we decreased the domain width and the lamel-
lae became thinner, the lamellae protruding deeper in the melt
broke up into a chain of small disconnected solid particles, see
Fig. 6. As the temperature increased further, these particles fully
melted in a short time. Depending on the conditions, a few of
them could coexist at the same time. A similar phenomenon has
been seen experimentally, when melting lamellar eutectic struc-
tures in transparent eutectics [23], a process the authors termed
as spherodisation.
Further studies would be required to clarify the details of these
non-steady-state phenomena, but these are out of the scope of the
present paper.
4.2. Asymmetric alloy, 2 dimensions
Another possibility to introduce asymmetry in the system is to
make the phase diagram asymmetric. We have done this by setting
the asymmetry parameter rc = 2, which corresponds to a phase di-
agram with the equilibrium compositions cα = −1/3, cβ = 2/3, and
cl = 0 at the eutectic temperature. Thus, the eutectic composition
remains c0 = 0 and the corresponding phase ratio is α : β = 2 : 1.
With these changes, we repeated most of the simulations de-