Fig. 3

The six grain microstructure before and after applied shear deformation. The initial values are shown to the left for \(\theta \) (top), \(\phi \) (middle) and norm of the curvature \(|\nabla \theta |\) (bottom). Top right shows the orientation distribution after shear deformation, middle right shows the corresponding phase-field \(\phi \) and bottom right shows the norm of the curvature. The true maximum value of the curvature norm is around \(|\nabla \theta |=1.9\) \(\upmu \mathrm {m}^{-1}\) but it has been capped off at 1 \(\upmu \mathrm {m}^{-1}\) for a better visualization. In the simulation, only one slip system \(\alpha =2\) was active, resulting in the formation of kink bands and subgrains. The slip direction of each grain is indicated with black lines in the top right figure