Vertex Simulation of Grain Growth from Electron Backscatter Diffraction Data.

Vertex method to simulate grain growth usually starts with the use of a homogeneous theoretical microstructure obtained by Voronoi tessellation. This microstructure does not represent real materials where the grains are not homogeneously distributed in terms of size and orientation. In order to take into account these inhomogeneities, and consequently correctly describe the grain growth process, in this paper a vertex simulation begins with the use of the experimental microstructure as the initial data. To facilitate the simulation procedure as well as the analysis of the result, instead of using only the network of grain boundaries and vertices to represent the microstructure in the standard vertex model, we use a hexagonal lattice to discretize the physical space. Each site of the hexagonal lattice is assigned three Euler angles that represent the grain orientation at that lattice site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]