ON THE VOLUME FRACTION DEPENDENCE OF PARTICLE LIMITED GRAIN-GROWTH

The purpose of this paper is to offer an analytical model that accounts for the different variation of the limiting grain radius with volume fraction of particles found in the computer simulations of Srolovitz et al. compared to classic Zener predictions. The effect of particles, seen both in the simulations and in the predictions, is to cause grain growth to cease at some limiting grain size. The results indicate that there is a stronger particle drag found by computer simulations than expected on the basis of the Zener model. The source of the discrepancy arises from Zener's assumption of random particle/grain boundary intersections. The computer simulation, on the other hand, shows a high correlation between boundaries and particles.