“…Anderson and his co-workers were the first to introduce the Potts model into grain growth simulations, applying this method to model the grain growth kinetics (Anderson et al, 1984), grain size distribution and topology (Srolovitz et al, 1984a), influence of particle dispersions (Srolovitz et al, 1984b), anisotropic grain boundary energies as well as abnormal grain growth Rollett et al, 1989;Rollett & Mullins, 1996). By incorporating specific elements corresponding to various microstructural processes into the basic algorithm, the MC method has been adapted to model for instance grain growth in twophase materials (Holm et al, 1993) and composites (Miodownik et al, 2000), abnormal grain growth (Lee at al., 2000, Messina et al, 2001Ivasishin et al, 2004), static recrystallization (Srolovitz et al, 1986;Srolovitz et al, 1988;Rollett et al, 1992a, Rollett & Raabe, 2001Song & Rettenmayr, 2002)), dynamic recrystallization (Peczak, 1995;Rollett et al, 1992b) and sintering Chen et al, 1990, Matsubara, 1999, and it has been demonstrated that such MC simulations are capable of reproducing the essential features of these microstructural phenomena. Nowadays, the MC method is often preferred to deterministic methods such as cellular automaton (Geiger et al, 2001) and phase-field models (Tikare et al, 1998) at the mesoscopic level, mainly due to its inherent simplicity and flexibility.…”