DOE PAGES title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: GrainGNN: A dynamic graph neural network for predicting 3D grain microstructure

Journal Article · · Journal of Computational Physics

We propose GrainGNN, a surrogate model for the evolution of polycrystalline grain structure under rapid solidification conditions in metal additive manufacturing. High fidelity simulations of solidification microstructures are typically performed using multicomponent partial differential equations (PDEs) with moving interfaces. The inherent randomness of the PDE initial conditions (grain seeds) necessitates ensemble simulations to predict microstructure statistics, e.g., grain size, aspect ratio, and crystallographic orientation. Here, currently such ensemble simulations are prohibitively expensive and surrogates are necessary.In GrainGNN, we use a dynamic graph to represent interface motion and topological changes due to grain coarsening. We use a reduced representation of the microstructure using hand-crafted features; we combine pattern finding and altering graph algorithms with two neural networks, a classifier (for topological changes) and a regressor (for interface motion). Both networks have an encoder-decoder architecture; the encoder has a multi-layer transformer long-short-term-memory architecture; the decoder is a single layer perceptron.We evaluate GrainGNN by comparing it to high-fidelity phase field simulations for in-distribution and out-of-distribution grain configurations for solidification under laser power bed fusion conditions. GrainGNN results in 80%–90% pointwise accuracy; and nearly identical distributions of scalar quantities of interest (QoI) between phase field and GrainGNN simulations compared using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. GrainGNN's inference speedup (PyTorch on single x86 CPU) over a high-fidelity phase field simulation (CUDA on a single NVIDIA A100 GPU) is 150×–2000× for 100-initial grain problem. Further, using GrainGNN, we model the formation of 11,600 grains in 220 seconds on a single CPU core.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725; SC0023171
OSTI ID:
2376346
Journal Information:
Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Vol. 510; ISSN 0021-9991
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (47)

Linking process, structure, property, and performance for metal-based additive manufacturing: computational approaches with experimental support journal January 2016
On the theory of normal and abnormal grain growth journal March 1965
Recrystallization and grain growth journal January 1952
A generalized field method for multiphase transformations using interface fields journal December 1999
On misorientation distribution evolution during anisotropic grain growth journal September 2001
A 3D Cellular Automaton algorithm for the prediction of dendritic grain growth journal May 1997
Three-dimensional microstructural evolution in ideal grain growth—general statistics journal April 2000
Phase-field simulation of the columnar-to-equiaxed transition in alloy solidification journal May 2006
A quantitative multi-phase field model of polycrystalline alloy solidification journal April 2010
Growth competition of columnar dendritic grains: A phase-field study journal January 2015
Topological changes in coarsening networks journal May 2017
The significance of spatial length scales and solute segregation in strengthening rapid solidification microstructures of 316L stainless steel journal February 2020
The development of grain structure during additive manufacturing journal June 2021
Reconstruction of 3D Microstructures from 2D Images via Transfer Learning journal November 2020
Accelerating phase-field predictions via recurrent neural networks learning the microstructure evolution in latent space journal July 2022
Effect of strong nonuniformity in grain boundary energy on 3-D grain growth behavior: A phase-field simulation study journal February 2017
Simulation of metal additive manufacturing microstructures using kinetic Monte Carlo journal July 2017
Large-scale phase-field study of anisotropic grain growth: Effects of misorientation-dependent grain boundary energy and mobility journal January 2021
Dendrite-resolved, full-melt-pool phase-field simulations to reveal non-steady-state effects and to test an approximate model journal May 2022
ExaCA: A performance portable exascale cellular automata application for alloy solidification modeling journal November 2022
Graph neural networks for efficient learning of mechanical properties of polycrystals journal January 2023
GrainNN: A neighbor-aware long short-term memory network for predicting microstructure evolution during polycrystalline grain formation journal February 2023
A compact review of molecular property prediction with graph neural networks journal December 2020
Phase field modeling of rapid resolidification of Al-Cu thin films journal February 2020
dyngraph2vec: Capturing network dynamics using dynamic graph representation learning journal January 2020
Competitive grain growth during directional solidification of a polycrystalline binary alloy: Three-dimensional large-scale phase-field study journal September 2018
Self-supervised learning and prediction of microstructure evolution with convolutional recurrent neural networks journal May 2021
Linking Phase-Field and Atomistic Simulations to Model Dendritic Solidification in Highly Undercooled Melts journal January 2002
Ultra-large-scale phase-field simulation study of ideal grain growth journal July 2017
Active learning in materials science with emphasis on adaptive sampling using uncertainties for targeted design journal February 2019
Accelerating phase-field-based microstructure evolution predictions via surrogate models trained by machine learning methods journal January 2021
Phase-field modeling of grain evolutions in additive manufacturing from nucleation, growth, to coarsening journal April 2021
Graph neural networks for an accurate and interpretable prediction of the properties of polycrystalline materials journal July 2021
Learning two-phase microstructure evolution using neural operators and autoencoder architectures journal September 2022
Physics-embedded graph network for accelerating phase-field simulation of microstructure evolution in additive manufacturing journal September 2022
Learning nonlinear operators via DeepONet based on the universal approximation theorem of operators journal March 2021
Fast inverse design of microstructures via generative invariance networks journal March 2021
Vertex models for two-dimensional grain growth journal September 1989
Efficient numerical algorithm for multiphase field simulations journal January 2006
Crystal Graph Convolutional Neural Networks for an Accurate and Interpretable Prediction of Material Properties journal April 2018
The Graph Neural Network Model journal December 2008
Microstructural Materials Design Via Deep Adversarial Learning Methodology journal October 2018
Numerical Analysis of the Vertex Models for Simulating Grain Boundary Networks journal January 2015
Long Short-Term Memory journal November 1997
Three-Dimensional Numerical Simulation of Grain Growth during Selective Laser Melting of 316L Stainless Steel journal September 2022
Understanding Uncertainty in Microstructure Evolution and Constitutive Properties in Additive Process Modeling journal February 2022
Process-Structure-Properties-Performance Modeling for Selective Laser Melting journal October 2019