ABSTRACT
There are special effects at any change in phase of a material that require the input or release of heat. Familiar examples are the additional energy needed to melt water, or the scalding caused by the condensation of steam as it releases its latent heat. The same may be true at less obvious transitions between different metallurgical states.1 From the point of view of thermal modeling these are all very similar, involving as they do the solution of a problem in heat conduction with an internal boundary (drilling problems are similar,2 as is laser cutting.3) The location of the boundary is not known in advance, and is, in fact, a part of the solution of the problem. Problems of this kind are often referred to as Stefan problems.
