Abstract
Development of the cellular automata (CA) sphere packing algorithm dedicated to the generation of two- and three-dimensional digital, synthetic microstructure models with heterogenous grain size distribution is presented within the paper. The synthetic microstructure model is generated in four major steps: generation of 2D/3D cellular automata computational domain, generation of circles/spheres with a required size distribution, close-packed filling of the computational domain with generated circles/spheres, growth of the circles/spheres according to the unconstrained CA growth algorithm. As a result, synthetic microstructure models with specific, required grain size distribution described by e.g. uni- or bimodal one are obtained. To reduce computational complexity and decrease execution time, the rotation of the circles/spheres during the packing stage is based on the vector accounting for the distance from computational domain borders and other spheres. The CA grain growth algorithm is also implemented using threads mechanism allowing parallel execution of computations to increase its efficiency. The developed algorithm with the implementation details as well as a set of examples of obtained results are presented within the paper.