Melting of polycrystalline metal

This is work by Alexey Kuksin, Vladimir Stegailov, Genri Norman and Alexey Yanilkin (Joint Institute for High Temperatures, Russian Academy of Sciences) on the melting of polycrystalline metal under ultrafast isochoric heating.

The animation shows melting of polycrystalline copper with nanosized grains subjected to ultrafast isochoric bulk heating. Atoms are colored by their centro-symmetry parameter. Lighter atoms correspond to a more disordered local environment that allows distinguishing grain boundaries and melting front propagation. The visualization was done with the AtomEye program.