Phase field simulation of grain growth with grain boundary segregation

The effects of grain boundary segregation and solute drag on grain size distributions were studied by employing the multi-phase-field method. It is shown that for normal grain growth the solute drag effect results in narrow steady state grain size distributions compared with the ideal grain growth. Besides influencing the normal grain growth, the solute drag can also induce abnormal grain growth. In some cases of abnormal grain growth self-similar grain size distributions are found and these distributions can be fitted by the lognormal function, which is consistent with the experimental observations.