On grain growth in the presence of mobile particles

The ability of second phase particles to migrate along with grain boundaries is shown to be determined not only by the particle mobility but also by the migration rate of the grain boundary where they locate. This leads to a duality in the mobile particle behaviour: they behave as either movable or immovable depending on the boundary migration rate. In the first case, they reduce the boundary mobility; in the second one they decrease the driving force for boundary migration. It is demonstrated by numerical modeling that mobile particles with low mobility can suppress grain growth even in nanocrystalline material, the limiting grains size being several times smaller than in the case of randomly distributed immobile particles. It is also shown that the Zener solution to the problem of the grain growth retardation by disperse particles is a specific case of the proposed approach. (C) 2010 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.