Effects of elastic contributions on the evolution of nano-structure Al_3Sc phase: A phase-field study

A micromechanical phase-field model is utilized to study the evolution of nanostructure al_3sc phase in al-sc alloy. we study the formation of al_3sc precipitates in an al-sc alloy by using an elastic phase-field model. since the precipitates of al3sc phase are fully coherent with the al matrix, the elastic energy will have an inuence on the resulting morphology. we have studied the effects of elastic strain energies on shape evolution of al3sc phase, numerically. the simulated nano-structures evolve from spherical to cubic shapes. the equilibrium shape of the coherent al_3sc phase is found to be determined by minimizing the sum of the elastic and interfacial energies through the phase-field equations. a coherency loss is observed when the precipitates reach a specific size. the simulation results show good agreements with previous experimental studies.