Phase-field simulation of coarsening of γ precipitates in an ordered γ′ matrix Original Research Article

The evolution of the microstructure and coarsening kinetics of disordered γ precipitates in an ordered monovariant γ′ matrix was studied using a diffuse-interface phase-field model in two dimensions. Specifically, we studied the morphological evolution, average precipitate size and size distribution as a function of time for a given temperature and for different concentrations. It was found that the coarsening kinetics for the average particle size are described by a t1/3 power law with a rate constant that increases with the volume fraction of the γ phase. The particle size distribution scaled by the average particle size is time invariant. We find that the particle shapes are perturbed by elastic interaction and local distributions of γ particles. Comparison of the phase-field simulation results with experiments shows good qualitative agreements.