Modeling the impact of grain boundary properties on microstructural evolution

Much new knowledge has been gained on the properties of grain boundaries that are relevant to processes of microstructural evolution such as grain growth and recrystallization. For mobility, a combination of experiments and numerical simulation has reinforced many of the classical concepts of special crystallographic types with either exceptionally high or exceptionally low mobilities. At another level, the anisotropy of energy of (especially) mobility has long been assumed to play an important role in both grain growth and recrystallizatioll. The process of "micro-growth selection" is assumed to favor, in fcc metals, the development of cube-oriented nuclei in the early stages of recrystallization. We describe simulations in which initial microstructures with varying degrees of verisimilitude to as-deformed microstructures are used, as well as various assumptions about the grain boundary energy and mobility. From these one it is apparent that the anisotropy does indeed effectively promote the cube component development.