Predictive Theory for the Grain Boundary Character Distribution

Abstract:

Mesoscale experiment and simulation permit harvesting information about both geometric featuresand texture in material microstructures. The grain boundary character distribution (GBCD) is an em-pirical distribution of the relative length (in 2D) or area (in 3D) of interface with a given lattice misori-entation and grain boundary normal. During the growth process, an initially random texture distribu-tion reaches a steady state that is strongly correlated to the interfacial energy density [9]. In simulation,it is found that if the given energy depends only on lattice misorientation, then the steady state GBCDand the energy are related by a Boltzmann distribution. This is among the simplest non-random dis-tributions, corresponding to independent trials with respect to the energy. Why does such a simpledistribution arise from such a complex system.