  The present paper describes the development of a novel and comprehensive
computational framework to simulate solidification problems in materials
processing, specifically casting processes. Heat transfer, solidification and
fluid flow due to natural convection are modeled. Empirical relations are used
to estimate the microstructure parameters and mechanical properties. The
fractional step algorithm is modified to deal with the numerical aspects of
solidification by suitably altering the coefficients in the discretized
equation to simulate selectively only in the liquid and mushy zones. This
brings significant computational speed up as the simulation proceeds. Complex
domains are represented by unstructured hexahedral elements. The algebraic
multigrid method, blended with a Krylov subspace solver is used to accelerate
convergence. State of the art uncertainty quantification technique is included
in the framework to incorporate the effects of stochastic variations in the
input parameters. Rigorous validation is presented using published experimental
results of a solidification problem.
