The effect of grain-boundary energy-anisotropy upon grain growth in polycrystalline materials was studied by using the multiphase field approach. In contrast to previous studies, the energy anisotropy here was not restricted to low misorientation-angles between adjacent grains. Phase-field simulations of grain growth in systems required a large number of order parameters in order to describe the individual grains. The resultant computational expense then restricted studies to small numbers of order parameters and the misorientation angles to a small number of discrete values. The treatment of a large number of order parameters and of continuous misorientation angles was made possible here by using the active parameter tracking algorithm of Vedantam & Patnaik (2006). The high-angle grain-boundary energy was assumed to be given by an extension of the Read–Shockley energy for low-angle grain boundaries. It was found that, whereas the Read–Shockley anisotropic grain-boundary energy decreased the growth rate with respect to the isotropic case, the extended Read–Shockley energy system significantly lowered the growth rates.

Phase Field Study of the Effect of Grain Boundary Energy Anisotropy on Grain Growth. A.Mallick, S.Vedantam: Computational Materials Science, 2009, 46[1], 21-5