The Role of Surface Tension and Mobility Model in Simulations of Grain Growth

Abstract: We explore the effects of surface tension and mobility models in simulations of grain growth using threshold dynamics algorithms that allow performing large scale simulations, while naturally capturing the Herring angle condition at junctions and automatically handling topological transitions. The results indicate that in two dimensions, the different surface tension / mobility models considered do not play a significant role in the stationary grain size distribution. However, in three dimensions, there is a substantial difference between the distributions obtained from the same three models, depending on whether the reduced mobilities are isotropic or anisotropic. Additional results show that in three dimensions, the misorientation distribution function of a grain network with random orientation texture returns to the close vicinity of the Mackenzie distribution even if started very far from it.