V. Tikare et Jd. Cawley, APPLICATION OF THE POTTS-MODEL TO SIMULATION OF OSTWALD RIPENING, Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 81(3), 1998, pp. 485-491
Many models have been developed to simulate microstructural evolution
in recent years, Among these is the Monte Carlo Potts model used to si
mulate microstructural evolution under a wide range of conditions for
a variety of microstructural evolution processes. An advantage of the
Potts model is that the thermodynamic and kinetic characteristics are
inherent to the technique. In this paper, grain growth by Ostwald ripe
ning will be used as an example to demonstrate how a well-designed Pot
ts model need not explicitly specify the thermodynamics of the process
; rather, it should rely on the statistical-mechanical nature of the m
odel to simulate the physics of the process, Simulation of Ostwald rip
ening requires two components forming two-phase, solid grains in a liq
uid matrix with solubility of the components forming the solid phase i
n the liquid phase, Another requirement is Gibbs-Thomson's behavior fo
r the solid grains where solubility is inversely proportional to size.
The incorporation of these characteristics into the Potts model using
the statistical-mechanical nature of the system will be demonstrated
in this paper.