Interplay of Kinetics and Microstructure in the Recrystallization of Pure Copper: Comparing Mesoscopic Simulations and Experiments

The kinetics and microstructure of the static recrystallization of strongly deformed, pure copper were investigated based on a comparison of mesoscopic, cellular automata simulations with experimental data. Physical models for the nucleation rate and the growth rate of recrystallized grains were employed, which required experimentally obtained informations about the deformed state as input. The orientation-distribution function and the misorientation-angle distribution for neighboring grains of deformed specimens were used to set up the microstructure serving as the start configuration for the simulations. The influences of a subgrain-size distribution, of an ongoing nucleation during recrystallization, of an inhomogeneously distributed stored energy in the deformed state, and of a misorientation-dependent interface mobility were investigated. The simulated microstructures after recrystallization exhibit a bimodal grain-size distribution instead of the broad, monomodal grain-size distribution found in the experiments. It is argued that spatially resolved determination of crystal (subgrain) orientation and (deformation) energy is necessary to arrive at realistic descriptions of both the recrystallization kinetics and the microstructure after completed recrystallization.