| Abstract Scope |
A novel protocol using a phase-field model was employed to process the 3D reconstruction of polycrystalline microstructures from synchrotron-based high-energy X-ray diffraction microscopy (HEDM) data. Reconstructions of these microstructures are influenced by factors such as heterogeneous grain size distributions, limited dynamic range of detectors, overlapping Bragg peaks, and other measurement errors. This noise leads to an unphysical roughness of the grain boundaries (GBs) at the mesoscale, complicating the quantification of GB properties like tortuosity, contact affinity, character, and curvature. Uncertainties in these measurements affect estimations of effective diffusivity, corrosion resistance, electrical resistance, and fracture strength. To circumvent these issues, we propose a processing protocol based on the phase-field governing equations. The result is a space-filling grain map that adheres to the physics of the microstructure by penalizing high-energy grain shapes and configurations and promoting GB smoothing. High-confidence regions are preserved by using a completeness-based mobility parameter in the phase-field model. The routine presented here serves as an intuitive and standardized alternative to conventional image processing routines and other tools, such as Dream.3D. This protocol can be generalized beyond HEDM and applied to any diffraction microscopy reconstruction with a spatial map of grains and corresponding confidence values, including polyphase materials. |