Coupled Rigid-Body Motion and Binary Phase Change: A Sharp Level-Set/Embedded-Boundary Method

Abstract

We develop a sharp-interface method for freely moving solid particles undergoing pure or binary melting. A Level-Set representation preserves the particle geometry during long-distance translation and rotation, while an embedded-boundary formulation imposes hydrodynamic, thermal and solutal conditions sharply on a Eulerian Cartesian mesh. Liquid temperature and solutal concentration are advanced with a conservative moving-cut-cell discretization, whereas the solid temperature is transported through a geometry-consistent conservative tracer. Hydrodynamic loads, rigid-body motion and phase change are coupled iteratively within each physical time step. The method is validated progressively for rigid-body motion, prescribed-motion pure and binary melting, and fully coupled melting with free particle motion. It reproduces established reference solutions and captures wake-induced rotation of a melting sphere and the simultaneous translation, rotation and thermosolutal melting of a three-dimensional oblate ellipsoid. As a final application, simulations of a floating ice disc reveal how thermoconvective instability, geometric confinement and melting jointly determine its spontaneous motion, with phase change feeding back on the instability through the evolving particle geometry. Additional tests establish the importance of long-time geometrical fidelity, local scalar conservation and geometry-consistent solid-temperature transport. The resulting framework provides a sharp and conservative approach for strongly coupled moving-body phase-change problems.