Modeling of thermotransport phenomenon in metal alloys using artificial neural networks

Thermodiffusion in molten metals, also known as thermotransport, a phenomenon in which constituent elements of an alloy separate under the influence of non-uniform temperature field, is of significance in several applications. However, due to the complex inter-particle interactions, there is no theoretical formulation that can model this phenomenon with adequate accuracy. Keeping in mind the severe deficiencies of the present day thermotransport models and an urgent need of a reliable method in several engineering applications ranging from crystal growth to integrated circuit design to nuclear reactor designs, an engineering approach has been taken in which neurocomputing principles have been employed to develop artificial neural network models to study and quantify the thermotransport phenomenon in binary metal alloys. Unlike any other thermotransport model for molten metals, the neural network approach has been validated for several types of binary alloys, viz., concentrated, dilute, isotopic and non-isotopic metals. Additionally, to establish the soundness of the model and to highlight its potential as a unified computational analysis tool, it ability to capture several thermotransport trends has been shown. Comparison with other models from the literature has also been made indicating a superior performance of this technique with respect to several other well established thermotransport models. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.