Thermal-elastic response of marble polycrystals: Influence of grain orientation configuration

Abstract Two-dimensional, microstructure-based finite element simulations were used to elucidate the influence of grain orientation configuration on the thermal-elastic response of polycrystalline ceramic materials. The two main constituent minerals of marbles, calcite and dolomite, were considered. The crystallographic configuration of the grains is described in terms of the distribution of grain orientations and grain-boundary misorientations. To probe the influence of grain orientation configuration, we first generated the geometry of a hypothetical microstructure. Next, crystallographic orientations were assigned to each grain in the microstructure such that the grain orientations and grain-boundary misorientations matched predefined distributions. By varying the predefined distributions, we generated 45 unique microstructures covering a wide range of crystallographic configurations. After assigning thermal-elastic properties to each structure, corresponding to either calcite or dolomite, finite-eleme...