Scaling laws for critical manifolds in polycrystalline materials

We study the surfaces of lowest energy through model polycrystalline materials in two and three dimensions. When the grain boundaries are sufficiently weak, these critical manifolds (CM's) lie entirely on grain boundaries, while when the grain boundaries are strong, cleavage occurs. A scaling theory for the intergranular to transgranular transition of CM's is developed. The key parameters are the average grain size g, the ratio of grain boundary to the grain interior energy, epsilon, and the sample size L. The key result is that a critical length scale exists, L(c)(g,epsilon), so that on short length scales lL(c), the critical manifold is rough. We develop a scaling theory for L(c) and find that in two dimensions L(c) approximately gx(y(2)), while in three dimensions L(c) approximately g exp(bx(y(3))), where x=epsilon/(1-epsilon) and b is a constant. Data from realistic polycrystalline grain structures are used to test the scaling theory. The exact lowest energy surface through model grain structures is found using a mapping to the minimum-cut/maximum-flow problem in computer science. As a function of grain-boundary energy, we observe the crossover from grain-boundary rupture to mixed mode failure (a mixture of transgramular and intergranular modes) and finally cleavage and that the two-dimensional data are consistent with y(2) approximately 3.0+/-0.3, while the three-dimensional data are more difficult to analyze, but are consistent with y(3) approximately 3.5+/-1.0.