Testing Theories and Simulations on Phase Coarsening by Experiments

The recent progress in theoretical, experimental, and computational studies of phase coarsening is briefly reported in this paper. The study of phase coarsening in materials processing is important to ensuring future improvements in a variety of industrial materials applications. The first successful theoretical description of diffusion-controlled phase coarsening in three-dimensional systems was proposed by Lifshitz and Slyozov in 1961, and independently, a theory for interface-reaction-controlled phase coarsening was developed by Wagner in 1961. In order to consider the effects of non-zero volume fraction on phase coarsening, recently, the author developed diffusion screening theory for the kinetics of phase coarsening. In the case of ultra-high volume fractions, the author’s diffusion layer theory was published in 2023. There are several advanced experimental methods developed to investigate and quantify the late-stage phase coarsening, including microgravity experiment on Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). Recently, phase field simulations for the study of phase coarsening have been performed for systems with different volume fractions.