Precipitation kinetics of Al3Zr and Al3Sc in aluminum supersaturated solid
solutions is studied using cluster dynamics, a mesoscopic modeling technique
which describes the various stages of homogeneous precipitation by a single set
of rate equations. The only parameters needed are the interface free energy and
the diffusion coefficient which are deduced from an atomic model previously
developed to study the same alloys. A comparison with kinetic Monte Carlo
simulations based on the vacancy diffusion mechanism shows that cluster
dynamics correctly predicts the precipitation kinetics provided a size
dependent interface free energy is used. It also manages to reproduce
reasonably well existing experimental data.Comment: Acta Mater. (2005), in pres
