Investigation on the existence of a 'Iiillert regime' in normal grain growth

The existence of a 'Hillert regime' in 3D normal grain growth, where the grain size distributions (GSDs) at different time-steps match the Hillert distribution during parabolic grain growth, is investigated for different initial GSDs using large-scale phase-field simulations. The short-lived 'Hillert regime' was present in the early-stage only in few cases. The GSDs obtained at a later-stage for all cases are self-similar over long period; independent of the initial GSDs; and wider than the Hillert distribution, Also, the topological properties in the 'Hillert regime' were different from that in the later-stage self-similar regime. (C) 2017 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.