The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twelve month research fellowship by Dr. Paul J. Sonda to work with Dr. Georg Muller at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg in Germany.
This project seeks to develop new computational models for the analysis and optimization of crystal growth processes. This joint project will integrate a realistic and user-friendly two-dimensional model for furnace heat transfer, the CrysVUn++ code developed by the host lab, with a three-dimensional, crystal growth code used for computing continuum transport and interfacial phenomena in crystal growth, developed by Dr. Jeff Derby's group at the University of Minnesota. This arrangement facilitates the study of three-dimensional transport phenomena in crystal growth by isolating some of the most complicated aspects of the problem, namely those related to furnace geometry and radiative heat transfer, to an outer region in which CrysVUn++ is used. The key to this integration is the application of model boundary conditions to ensure optimal accuracy, and convergence. Once these models have been developed, they will be applied to study transport phenomena within crystal growth systems.
