Optimization-based “phase field” model for polycrystalline ferroelectrics/ferroelastics

Phase field model is a very useful tool for simulations of materials evolution. In recent years, it has been used to simulate domain switching in ferroelectrics and has achieved great success. However, due to the large computational complexity, it is usually used in 2-D single crystal ferroelectrics. To solve this problem, we propose an optimization-based computational model for domain evolution in polycrystalline ferroelectrics/ferroelastics. This model has the similar superiority as the phase field model while its computational efficiency is fairly high and it is feasible to study 3-D cases using numerous grains. Furthermore, this model can reproduce the Taylor’s rule of plasticity very well.

These works were just published on APL and Acta Materialia. Any comments are welcome.