Stability of grain boundary texture during isothermal grain growth in UO2 considering anisotropic grain boundary properties

Abstract

In the present study, mesoscale simulations of grain growth in UO2 are performed using a 2D level set representation of the polycrystal grain boundary network, employed in a finite element setting. Anisotropic grain boundary properties are considered by evaluating how grain boundary energy and mobility varies with local grain boundary character. This is achieved by considering different formulations of the anisotropy of grain boundary properties, for example in terms of coincidence site lattice (CSL) correspondence. Such modeling approaches allow tracing of the stability of a number of characteristic low-Σ boundaries in the material during grain growth. The present simulations indicate that anisotropic grain boundary properties have negligible influence on the grain growth rate. However, considering the evolution of grain boundary character distribution and the grain size distribution, it is found that neglecting anisotropic boundary properties will strongly bias predictions obtained from numerical simulations.