Abnormal grain growth in randomly-oriented fine grains in an Al–Mg–Sc–Zr alloy processed by laser-powder-bed-fusion
Yanchi Chen, Xiang Chen, Han Chen, Yakai Xiao, Jing Dai, Yidan Chen, Yuchi Cui, Chengyi Dan, Zhe Chen, Xianfeng Li, Haowei Wang
Abstract
In this work, we report a counter-intuitive activation of abnormal grain growth (AGG) in randomly-oriented fine grains (FGs) in an L-PBF Al–Mg–Sc–Zr alloy, which is unlikely from perspectives of curvature-driven grain growth, crystallographic texture or strain-induced boundary migration. The observed spontaneous AGG is understood in light of the growth instability of an arbitrary grain in an evolving particle-pinned polycrystalline aggregation. A generalized criterion for AGG is hence proposed, which efficaciously explains the observed susceptibility of FGs to AGG, the presence of multiple AGG activation sites, and the asynchrony of AGG activation.