On the variability of grain boundary mobility in the isoconfigurational ensemble

AQ Qiu and I Chesser and E Holm, ACTA MATERIALIA, 257, 119075 (2023).

DOI: 10.1016/j.actamat.2023.119075

Recent grain growth experiments have revealed that the same type of grain boundary can have very different mobilities depending on its local microstructure. In this work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to quantify uncertainty in the reduced mobility of curved grain boundaries for different types of boundary conditions and over a range of initial velocity seeds. We consider cylindrical island grains in Ni with a 001 tilt axis as a model system. Unexpectedly, we find large variation in the reduced mobility of curved grain boundaries depending on the imposed constraints, the initial velocity distribution and grain size. We perform a dynamic propensity analysis inspired by studies of glass forming liquids to analyze sources of variation in reduced mobility. Our work highlights the significant impact of initial velocity distributions on grain boundary motion which has not been analyzed in prior work.

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