Grain boundary motion and grain rotation in aluminum bicrystals: recent experiments and simulations

DA Molodov and LA Barrales-Mora and JE Brandenburg, 36TH RISO INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON MATERIALS SCIENCE, 89, 012008 (2015).

DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/89/1/012008

The results of experimental and computational efforts over recent years to study the motion of geometrically different grain boundaries and grain rotation under various driving forces are briefly reviewed. Novel in-situ measuring techniques based on orientation contrast imaging and applied simulation techniques are described. The experimental results obtained on specially grown aluminum bicrystals are presented and discussed. Particularly, the faceting and migration behavior of low angle grain boundaries under the curvature force is addressed. In contrast to the pure tilt boundaries, which remained flat/faceted and immobile during annealing at elevated temperatures, mixed tilt-twist boundaries readily assumed a curved shape and steadily moved under the capillary force. Computational analysis revealed that this behavior is due to the inclinational anisotropy of grain boundary energy, which in turn depends on boundary geometry. The shape evolution and shrinkage kinetics of cylindrical grains with different tilt and mixed boundaries were studied by molecular dynamics simulations. The mobility of low angle < 100 > boundaries with misorientation angles higher than 10 degrees, obtained by both the experiments and simulations, was found not to differ from that of the high angle boundaries, but decreases essentially with further decrease of misorientation. The shape evolution of the embedded grains in simulations was found to relate directly to results of the energy computations. Further simulation results revealed that the shrinkage of grains with pure tilt boundaries is accompanied by grain rotation. In contrast, grains with the tilt-twist boundaries composed of dislocations with the mixed edge-screw character do not rotate during their shrinkage. Stress driven boundary migration in aluminium bicrystals was observed to be coupled to a tangential translation of the grains. The activation enthalpy of high angle boundary migration was found to vary non-monotonically with misorientation angle, whereas for low angle boundaries the migration activation enthalpy was virtually the same. The motion of the mixed tilt-twist boundaries under stress was observed to be accompanied by both the translation of adjacent grains parallel to the boundary plane and their rotation around the boundary plane normal.

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