Although phase field methods are widely recognized as valuable tools for modeling and understanding microstructural changes in nonequilibrium systems, their predictive capabilities have suffered from the difficulty that lies in defining a time scale. We have therefore developed a predictive method for modeling the kinetics with which a nonequilibrium conservative system reaches thermodynamic equilibrium. The method, which couples effective medium theory and phase field is self-consistent, making it fully predictive, providing atomic diffusion properties are sufficiently well known. We validate the method by studying the demixing kinetics in a wide range of binary alloys but focusing on Fe-Cr, an archetypal system against which phase field applications are often assessed. The extension of the method to nonconservative systems is straightforward.

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• Dynamics of phase separation
• First order phase transitions
• Phase separation
• Phase transitions