Phase-field Simulations of Grain Growth in Two-dimensional Systems Containing Finely Dispersed Coarsening Particles

In this study, we have performed phase-field simulations of grain growth in two-dimensional systems containing finely dispersed coarsening particles. In particular, the effects of the Ostwald ripening of particles on the grain growth kinetics and the morphology of the matrix grains have been investigated. After reaching a steady state, not only does the growth of the particles obey power-law kinetics, but also the growth of the matrix grains, with an exponent of 3. In the case of systems having a small fraction of immobile particles, the grain size distributions (GSDs) of the matrix grains become broader with a small fraction of particles. For systems containing particles that coarsen with simulation time, the GSDs become narrower with an increase in the area fraction of the particles, fp(0). We have applied both active parameter tracking (APT) algorithms and parallel coding techniques to the multi-phase-field (MPF) model to accelerate the computations and to embody large-scale calculations.