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Phase-field crystal simulation of tilt grain boundary evolution under tensile deformation

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Abstract

The grain boundary (GB) migration and dislocation movement are the basic mechanisms of deformation and strengthening of alloys. The migration of circular and asymmetric tilt GB initiated from the dislocation movement during tensile deformation was investigated by phase-field crystal simulation. It is shown that the migration of circular GB is performed by dislocation slipping, accompanying by the rotation and tensile deformation of the circular grain. The dislocation dissociation and slipping realize the migration of low-angle asymmetric tilt GB. Additionally, the dislocation dissociation generates new grains with different orientations, then the new grains merge with the annihilation of dislocations. For high-angle asymmetric tilt GB, the migration mechanism is dislocation emission and slipping. The generation or merging of new grains reduces the misorientation of grains for low-angle asymmetric tilt GB. The formation of new grains at low-angle asymmetric tilt GB is caused by the dislocations dissociation, while the emission of dislocations generates the new grains in high-angle asymmetric tilt GB. The studies reveal the mechanisms of GB migration and grains reproduction by the dislocation slipping and reactions under the tensile deformation at the atomic scale.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52275342) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 30921013107).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China

    Zan Zhang, Weijin Zhao, Suleman Muhammad, Peng Sang, Ye Shan & Yongsheng Li

  2. MIIT Key Laboratory of Advanced Metallic and Intermetallic Materials Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China

    Zan Zhang, Weijin Zhao, Suleman Muhammad, Peng Sang, Ye Shan & Yongsheng Li

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  1. Zan Zhang
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Contributions

ZZ: Investigation, Data analysis and interpretation of results, Methodology. WZ: Data curation, Writing-original draft; SM: Data curation, Formal analysis; PS: Investigation, Formal analysis; YS: Investigation, Data Curation; YL: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources, Writing-review and editing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yongsheng Li.

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Zhang, Z., Zhao, W., Muhammad, S. et al. Phase-field crystal simulation of tilt grain boundary evolution under tensile deformation. Appl. Phys. A 129, 734 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-07007-z

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