Browsing by Author "Hadian, Raheleh"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Atomistic migration mechanisms of atomically flat, stepped, and kinked grain boundaries
(2016) Hadian, Raheleh; Grabowski, Blazej; Race, Christopher Peter; Neugebauer, Jörg
We studied the migration behavior of mixed tilt and twist grain boundaries in the vicinity of a symmetric tilt ⟨111⟩ Σ7 grain boundary in aluminum. We show that these grain boundaries fall into two main categories of stepped and kinked grain boundaries around the atomically flat symmetric tilt boundary. Using these structures together with size converged molecular dynamics simulations and investigating snapshots of the boundaries during migration, we obtain an intuitive and quantitative description of the kinetic and atomistic mechanisms of the migration of general mixed grain boundaries. This description is closely related to well-known concepts in surface growth such as step and kink-flow mechanisms and allows us to derive analytical kinetic models that explain the dependence of the migration barrier on the driving force. Using this insight we are able to extract energy barrier data for the experimentally relevant case of vanishing driving forces that are not accessible from direct molecular dynamics simulations and to classify arbitrary boundaries based on their mesoscopic structures.
Open Access
A machine learning approach to model solute grain boundary segregation
(2018) Huber, Liam; Hadian, Raheleh; Grabowski, Blazej; Neugebauer, Jörg
Even minute amounts of one solute atom per one million bulk atoms may give rise to qualitative changes in the mechanical response and fracture resistance of modern structural materials. These changes are commonly related to enrichment by several orders of magnitude of the solutes at structural defects in the host lattice. The underlying concept - segregation - is thus fundamental in materials science. To include it in modern strategies of materials design, accurate and realistic computational modelling tools are necessary. However, the enormous number of defect configurations as well as sites solutes can occupy requires models which rely on severe approximations. In the present study we combine a high-throughput study containing more than 1 million data points with machine learning to derive a computationally highly efficient framework which opens the opportunity to model this important mechanism on a routine basis.
Open Access
Migration mechanisms of a faceted grain boundary
(2018) Hadian, Raheleh; Grabowski, Blazej; Finnis, Michael W.; Neugebauer, Jörg
We report molecular dynamics simulations and their analysis for a mixed tilt and twist grain boundary vicinal to the Σ7 symmetric tilt boundary of the type {123} in aluminum. When minimized in energy at 0K, a grain boundary of this type exhibits nanofacets that contain kinks. We observe that at higher temperatures of migration simulations, given extended annealing times, it is energetically favorable for these nanofacets to coalesce into a large terrace-facet structure. Therefore, we initiate the simulations from such a structure and study as a function of applied driving force and temperature how the boundary migrates. We find the migration of a faceted boundary can be described in terms of the flow of steps. The migration is dominated at lower driving force by the collective motion of the steps incorporated in the facet, and at higher driving forces by the step detachment from the terrace-facet junction and propagation of steps across the terraces. The velocity of steps on terraces is faster than their velocity when incorporated in the facet, and very much faster than the velocity of the facet profile itself, which is almost stationary. A simple kinetic Monte Carlo model matches the broad kinematic features revealed by the molecular dynamics. Since the mechanisms seem likely to be very general on kinked grain-boundary planes, the step-flow description is a promising approach to more quantitative modeling of general grain boundaries.