  Mean-field models have the ability to predict grain size distribution
evolution occurring through thermomechanical solicitations. This article
focuses on a comparison of mean-field models under grain growth conditions.
Different microstructure representations are considered and discussed,
especially regarding the consideration of topology in the neighborhood
construction. Experimental data obtained with a heat treatment campaign on a
316L austenitic stainless steel are used for material parameters identification
and as a reference for model comparisons. Mean-field models are also confronted
to both mono- and bimodal initial grain size distributions to investigate the
interest of introducing neighborhood topology in microstructure predictions
models. This article exposes that improvements in the predictions are obtained
in monomodal cases for topological models. In bimodal test, no comparison with
experimental data were performed as no data were available. But relative
comparisons between models indicate few differences in predictions. The
interest of neighborhood topology in grain growth mean-field models gives
overall small improvements compared to classical mean-field models when
comparing implementation complexity.
