A mesoscale cellular automaton model for curvature-driven grain growth

A two-dimensional mesoscale cellular automaton algorithm is developed to simulate curvature-driven grain growth during materials processing. In the present model, a deterministic switch rule for the grain growth is adopted, and thus the kinetics of the grain growth can be simulated quantitatively. In addition, the grain-boundary energy is dependent on the misorientation between neighboring grains. At mesoscale, the simulations show that each grain displays a unique growth behavior. The growth behavior of individual grains can be categorized into four types: (1) grains with monotonically increasing equivalent diameters, (2) grains that first grow and then begin to shrink, (3) grains with almost constant diameters, and (4) grains that decrease in size. Furthermore, an oscillation grain-growth behavior is observed in the present mesoscale cellular automaton simulations. This simulated individual grain-growth behavior has not been reported in the literature.