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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2011
A mesoscopic simulation methodology has been used to investigate the effect of the initial grain size distribution and grain boundary (GB) mobilities on the development of abnormal grain growth in a single-phase polycrystalline material. Our studies show that regardless of the initial grain size distribution, in the absence of variability in GB properties, the system evolves by normal grain growth characterized by a uniform self-similar grain-size distribution, i.e. the presence of a few large grains in the initial microstructure does not promote abnormal grain growth. On the contrary, the presence of a limited set of grains having GBs with higher mobilities may lead to abnormal grain growth provided the biased GB mobility values are larger than certain threshold values. Kinetic and topological aspects of normal to abnormal grain growth transition are investigated.