Phase field theory of polycrystalline solidification in three dimensions

A phase field theory of polycrystalline solidification is presented that describes the nucleation and growth of anisotropic particles with different crystallographic orientation in three dimensions. As opposed to the two-dimensional case, where a single orientation field suffices, in three dimensions, a minimum number of three fields are needed. The free energy of grain boundaries is assumed to be proportional to the angular difference between the adjacent crystals expressed here in terms of the differences of the four symmetric Euler parameters. The equations of motion for these fields are obtained from variational principles. Illustrative calculations are performed for polycrystalline solidification with dendritic, needle and spherulitic growth morphologies.