ICGG-3: Plenary Lecture

The Third International Conference on Grain Growth (ICGG-3) will be held June 14-19, 1998, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The conference will deal with all aspects of grain growth in materials. ICGG-3 is being sponsored by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) and by invited cosponsors: Materials Research Society and ASM International.

Lecture Topic: "Models of Grain Growth"
When: Monday, June 15, 1998, 9:00 a.m.
Location: University Center McConomy Auditorium
Lecturer: William W. Mullins, Carnegie Mellon University

About the Presenter

Professor Mullins received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1955 with Cyril Stanley Smith as advisor. He was employed at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories in Pittsburgh from 1955-1960, and then at Carnegie Mellon University (then CIT) where he served as Head of the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science from 1963 to 1966, and as Dean of the then College of Engineering and Science from 1966 to 1970. In 1985, he was appointed University Professor of Applied Science. His research has been concentrated in the areas of the morphology of phase transformations, the capillarity-induced evolution of surfaces, the thermodynamics of stressed solids and solid surfaces and the mathematical theory of grain boundary motion, grain growth and coarsening. He was awarded a Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowship in 1961, received the Mathewson Gold Medal in 1963, the Philip M. McKenna Memorial Award in 1981, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984, received a Professional Achievement Citation from the University of Chicago alumni Association in 1990, a Humboldt senior fellowship in 1992, the Mehl Medal and Memorial Lectureship in 1994, the Von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society in 1995 and was elected Fellow of TMS in 1995.

About the Topic

A brief history of the principal models of grain growth induced by grain boundary energy reduction will be presented. These include stochastic models and deterministic models, both vertex and curvature based. The theoretical foundations of these models will be examined and compared, with emphasis on curvature models. A general theorem based on curvature driven growth will be presented that permits the deduction of relative grain boundary mobilities from a given experimental microstructure. Some new theoretical results for the two dimensional uniform grain boundary model, based on the concept of statistical self-similarity, will be presented and used to analyze the Hillert theory in relation to simulation data. Finally, some discussion of exaggerated grain growth that results from non-uniform boundaries will be given.