Modeling polycrystalline microstructures in 3D

Many issues in forming are influenced to some degree by the internal structure of the material which is commonly referred to by the materials science community as microstructure. Although the term microstructure is commonly only thought of in the context of grain size, it more properly encompasses all relevant aspects of internal material structure. For the purposes of forming, the most relevant features are the crystallographic orientations of the grains ("texture") and the locations of the grain boundaries, or, equivalently, the size, topology and shape of the grains. In order to perform realistic simulations one needs to specify the initial state of the material, e.g. on a finite element mesh, with sufficient detail that all these features are reproduced. Measuring microstructure at the scale of individual grains is possible in the synchrotron but scarcely practicable for an analyst. Cross-sections or surfaces are easily evaluated through automated diffraction in the scanning electron microscope (SEM), however. Therefore this paper describes a set of methods for generating statistically representative 3D microstructures based on microscopy input for both single-phase and two-phase materials. Examples are given of application of the technique for generating input structures for recrystallization simulation, dynamic deformation and finite element modeling.