Phase Field Simulation of Grain Growth with Particle Pinning

The properties of alloys depend on its microstructure, such as the size of grains. In general, the balanced mechanical properties of alloys can be obtained with small grain size. While the grain size of alloys may increases under heat treatment, thermal mechanical processing and service condition of high temperature, i.e., the grain growth is inevitable. The effort of most research is to control the rate of grain growth and avoid abnormal grain growth. For example, pinning the grain boundary and reduce its mobility with the second phase particles in order to prevent grain growth. Therefore, the properties of the alloys will not decreases dramatically and the structure retains a high degree of integrity. The details of grain growth with particle pinning were investigated by phase field simulations in the present paper. It is found that, with the same size of pinning particles, the pinning effect increases with the increases of the pinning particle number. With the same pinning particle number, the pinning effect increases with the increases of pinning particle size. Under the same total volume of pinning particles while different particle size and number, the pinning effect is complicated and it will be discussed in details. The pinning effect decreases with the increases of grain boundary energy. These findings could shed light on the understanding of the grain growth kinetics with particle pinning.