Grain boundary grooving by surface diffusion: an analytic nonlinear model for a symmetric groove

The fourth-order nonlinear boundary-value problem for the evolution of a single symmetric grain-boundary groove by surface diffusion is modelled analytically. A solution is achieved by partitioning the surface into subintervals delimited by lines of constant slope. Within each subinterval, the advance of the surface is described by an integrable nonlinear evolution equation. The model is capable of incorporating the actual nonlinearity arbitrarily closely. The surface profile is determined for various values of the central groove slope including the limiting case of a groove which has a root that is vertical. Such a solution exists only because of the nonlinearity.