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Department Atomistic Modelling and Simulation
Research Group

Phase-field Simulation of Microstructures

Our research group focuses on the development and applications of new methods for phase-field simulations of microstructure development in complex materials. At present, our range of applications for phase-field modeling includes rapid and conventional solidification, grain growth, eutectic and peritectic reactions, recrystallization, precipitation in industrial grade alloys, bainite and martensite formation in steel and many others.


Oleg ShchygloRUB, Marquard
Dr. Oleg Shchyglo

Research Group Leader

Room: 02-507
Tel.: +49 234 32 26761
E-Mail: oleg.shchyglo@rub.de




Research

Nowadays, the phase-field method allows to address not only generalized microstructure formation scenarios in a qualitative manner but also addressing real academic and industrial problems, showing good qualitative agreement with experimental observations. On top of that, the method provides access to the details of microstructure formation that are hard and some times not even possible to obtain experimentally.
This makes the phase-field method indispensable when studying complex transformations involving the simultaneous evolution of a number of relevant fields, e.g. temperature, composition, stress and strain as well as the microstructure itself. The quintessence of the transformation complexity can be attributed to the formation of bainite in steel where all fields mentioned above evolve simultaneously and have to be carefully considered. Together with the modeling of martensite formation the modeling of bainite formation in steel is one of our focus areas in ongoing research.

Nucleation and growth of the β phase in the liquid pocket near the eutectic temperature followed by the nucleation and growth of the α phase in the residual liquid.
ICAMS, RUB

The group is developing an open source phase-field simulation library OpenPhase which is closely related to our scientific projects.

Evolution of composition and constitutional undercooling during partial remelting of as-built (left) and homogenized (right) single crystal (SX) sample of Ni-Al binary alloy system.
ICAMS, RUB

Competences

  • Phase-field modeling
  • Phase transformations
  • Microscopic elasticity theory
  • OpenPhase library development
Members
Recent Publications

Research Examples

Phase-field simulation of creep in superalloys

A dislocation density-based crystal plasticity — phase-field model is applied to investigate directional coarsening during creep in CMSX-4 Ni-based superalloys in the high-temperature and low-stress regime

Teaser B1
Modeling of divorced eutectic microstructure

In this study, the partially divorced the eutectic microstructure of α-Mg, and β-Mg17Al12 was investigated by electron backscatter diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and phase-field modeling in hypoeutectic Mg-Al alloys.