The nucleation of cavities at grain boundaries

Author(s):  
P. J. Goodhew

Cavity nucleation and growth at grain and phase boundaries is of concern because it can lead to failure during creep and can lead to embrittlement as a result of radiation damage. Two major types of cavity are usually distinguished: The term bubble is applied to a cavity which contains gas at a pressure which is at least sufficient to support the surface tension (2g/r for a spherical bubble of radius r and surface energy g). The term void is generally applied to any cavity which contains less gas than this, but is not necessarily empty of gas. A void would therefore tend to shrink in the absence of any imposed driving force for growth, whereas a bubble would be stable or would tend to grow. It is widely considered that cavity nucleation always requires the presence of one or more gas atoms. However since it is extremely difficult to prepare experimental materials with a gas impurity concentration lower than their eventual cavity concentration there is little to be gained by debating this point.

2015 ◽  
Vol 778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cunjing Lv ◽  
Christophe Clanet ◽  
David Quéré

We study the behaviour of elongated puddles deposited on non-wetting substrates. Such liquid strips retract and adopt circular shapes after a few oscillations. Their thickness and horizontal surface area remain constant during this reorganization, so that the energy of the system is only lowered by minimizing the length of the contour (and the corresponding surface energy); despite the large scale of the experiments (several centimetres), motion is driven by surface tension. We focus on the retraction stage, and show that its velocity results from a balance between the capillary driving force and inertia, due to the frictionless motion on non-wetting substrates. As a consequence, the retraction velocity has a special Taylor–Culick structure, where the puddle width replaces the usual thickness.


1990 ◽  
Vol 202 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J. Frost

ABSTRACTThis paper will review the topic of computer simulation of the evolution of grain structure in polycrystalline thin films, with particular attention to the modelling of the grain growth process. If the grain size is small compared to the film thickness, then the grain structure is three-dimensional. As the grains grow to become larger than the film thickness, so that most grains traverse the entire thickness of the film, the microstructure may approach the conditions for a two-dimensional grain structure. Both two- and three-dimensional grain growth have been simulated by various authors.When the grains become large enough for the microstructure to be two-dimensional, the surface energy associated with the two free surfaces of the film becomes comparable to the surface energy of the grain boundaries. In this condition, the free surface may profoundly effect the grain growth. One effect is that grooves may develop along the lines where the grain boundaries meet the free surfaces. This grooving may pin the boundaries against further migration and lead to grain-growth stagnation. Another possible effect is that differences in the free surface energy for grains with different crystallographic orientation may provide a driving force for the migration of the boundaries which is additional to that provided by grain boundary capillarity. Grains with favorable orientations will grow at the expense of grains with unfavorable orientations. The coupling of grain-growth stagnation with an additional driving force can produce abnormal or secondary grain growth in which a few grains grow very large by consuming the normal grains.


2000 ◽  
Vol 650 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. L. Dudarev

ABSTRACTThe effect of inhomogeneous nucleation and growth of cavities near grain boundaries illustrates the failure of the standard rate theory to describe the kinetics of phase transformations in irradiated materials under cascade damage conditions. The enhanced swelling observed near grain boundaries is believed to result from the competition between the diffusional growth of cavities and their shrinkage due to the interaction with mobile interstitial clusters. Swelling rates associated with the two processes behave in a radically different way as a function of the size of growing cavities. For a spatially homogeneous distribution of cavities this gives rise to the saturation of swelling in the limit of large irradiation doses.We investigate the evolution of the population of cavities nucleating and growing near a planar grain boundary. We show that a cavity growing near the boundary is able to reach a size that is substantially larger than the size of a cavity growing in the interior region of the grain. For a planar grain boundary the magnitude of swelling at maximum is found to be up to eight times higher than the magnitude of swelling in the grain interior.


1993 ◽  
Vol 310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshihiko Tani ◽  
Zhengkui Xu ◽  
David A. Payne

AbstractPLZT thin layers were deposited onto various substrates by sol-gel methods, and crystallized under different conditions and substrate treatments. Relationships are given for the chemical characteristics of the substrate's surface and the preferred orientations which develop on heat treatment. A preferred (111) orientation always developed for perovskite crystallized on Pt layers which contained Ti on the surface. This was attributed to the formation of Pt3Ti and the role of heteroepitaxial nucleation and growth sites. In addition, a preferred (100) orientation was also obtained on unannealed Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates which were free of Ti on the surface. This was attributed to self-textured growth with flat faces striving for minimum surface energy conditions. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of interfacial chemistry on the control of texture for crystallization of PLZT thin layers on coated substrates.


2006 ◽  
Vol 503-504 ◽  
pp. 125-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuntian T. Zhu

Deformation twins have been oberved in nanocrystalline (NC) Al synthsized by cryogenic ball-milling and in NC Cu processed by high-pressure torsion under room temperature and at a very low strain rate. They were found formed by partial dislocations emitted from grain boundaries. This paper first reviews experimental evidences on deformation twinning and partial dislocation emissions from grain boundaries, and then discusses recent analytical models on the nucleation and growth of deformation twins. These models are compared with experimental results to establish their validity and limitations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 838-839 ◽  
pp. 34-40
Author(s):  
Hidehiro Yoshida ◽  
Koji Morita ◽  
Byung Nam Kim ◽  
Koji Matsui ◽  
Yuichi Ikuhara ◽  
...  

Superplasticity in fine-grained oxide ceramics has been generally elucidated on the basis of their experimental strain rate-flow stress relationship and phenomenological analysis of cavity nucleation and growth. It has been widely accepted that the high temperature superplastic flow and failure in ceramics is significantly influenced by the atomic structure and chemistry of grain boundaries. Such phenomenon cannot be explained based on the classical phenomenological analysis. Our research group has therefore proposed to establish a new research field, grain boundary plasticity, to describe the superplastic deformation related to the grain boundary atomic structure. This paper aims to point out the importance of the atomistic analysis of grain boundary to develop new superplastic ceramics.


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