Papers by Author: Daniel Lewis

Abstract: The theoretical description of grain growth was based for many years on the so-calledspherical model. The spherical model represents a polyhedral grain with N faces and a volume, V ,by a sphere with an equal volume having the equivalent grain radius, R. That model leads to severalinteresting results concerning normal and abnormal grain growth as well as grain size distribution.Nevertheless, representation of grains by spheres entails a fundamental limitation: namely, all topo-logical information of the polyhedral grain is forsaken. The rich variety of grain shapes occurringin three-dimensional polycrystalline networks, however, makes their energetic and kinetic analysesextremely difficult. To simplify analyses of isotropic polycrystals, average N-hedra and generalizedN-hedra ANHs or GNHs .N D 3; 4; 5;1/ were created as a set of regular polyhedra, consisting ofN identical faces that act as topological proxies for analyzing irregular grains containing N mixedfaces. The adoption of ANH/GNH as representations of polyhedral grains led to further progress inour understanding of grain growth, particularly those aspects related to topological behavior. This pa-per summarizes some recent advances of representing polyhedral grains by ANHs/GNHs rather thanby spheres.

Abstract: The multiplicity and variety of grain shapes in three-dimensional polycrystalline metals makes their energetic and kinetic analyses difficult. To help simplify the analysis of isotropic polycrystals, average N-hedra (ANHs) (N=3,4,5,…∞) were created as a set of regular polyhedra, consisting of N identical faces, which act as topological “proxies” for analyzing the corresponding class of irregular grains containing mixed faces of the same number. This paper outlines a further generalization of the ANH concept that extends three-dimensional analysis to include the growth or shrinkage of a small population of grains embedded in a textured matrix.