Impact of grain boundary energy anisotropy on grain growth

Recent observations of microstructure evolution during annealing revealed that grain growth not only reduces grain boundary area but also dissipates additional energy through a decrease in average grain boundary energy---a feature that isotropic simulations with uniform energy assumption fail to predict. The authors use a threshold dynamics model incorporating anisotropic grain boundary energies to simulate the observed grain growth of polycrystalline Ni. The model predicts an increase in the relative area of low-energy twin boundaries and a decrease in average boundary energy. This study highlights that realistic simulation of grain growth in polycrystals requires anisotropic grain boundary energy implementation.