Effect of grain boundary energy anisotropy on highly textured grain structures studied by phase-field simulations

Two-dimensional phase-field simulations were performed of grain growth in highly textured materials with equal fractions of two texture components, denoted as alpha and beta grains, and assuming two values of the grain boundary energies, namely sigma(low) for the boundaries between grains of a different texture component and sigma(high) for boundaries between grains of a similar orientation, resulting in microstructures with alternating alpha and beta grains and stable quadruple junctions. For different magnitudes of the anisotropy in grain boundary energy R = sigma(high)/sigma(low), the occurrence of the different types of triple and quadruple junctions and the distributions of the normalized grain size, the number of faces per grain, the normalized grain boundary length per grain and the dihedral angles at grain boundary junctions were investigated. (C) 2013 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.