Simulation of grain coarsening in two dimensions by cellular-automaton Original Research Article

This paper presents a computer simulation model, namely Cellular Automaton (CA), which aims at investigating the behaviour of normal grain coarsening in 2D that corresponds well to the described physical model. The CA model takes into account the following: the energy barrier of cellular transition depends on the energy of the grain boundary; the energy of boundaries depends on the misorientation of the grains and the energy of the cells follows the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. The model was tested on both simple geometrical configurations and on real structures. The effect of temperature, orientation difference, activation energy, and boundary energy for the kinetics of grain coarsening were analysed and discussed. The optimal orientation value, qmax, was greater than 64, and at smaller qmax values non-real structures develop. The rate and kinetics of coarsening depend on a qmax value up to 64, the energy barrier and the boundary energy. The rate of coarsening cannot be described by only one exponential function over a wide temperature range.