Energetic and kinetic considerations of grain boundary engineering in Ni3Al

Grain Boundary Engineering, GEE, is a microstructural control technique applied to materials susceptible to intergranular fracture and intergranular stress corrosion cracking as a method to alleviate these material weaknesses. GEE can take on two main forms, reduction of grain size to the nanometre range as in nanocrystalline materials, or grain boundary character distribution modification through thermomechanical methods to change the grain boundary population from one susceptible to cracking to one which is relatively immune. The kinetic and energetic factors applicable to this second process in nickel aluminide, Ni3Al, will he discussed. Embedded atom method molecular dynamics simulations of grain boundary energy will be compared to grain boundary character distributions obtained on recrystallized and strain annealed nickel aluminide.