ESTIMATION OF BIVARIATE SIZE AND ORIENTATION DISTRIBUTION OF MICROCRACKS

Microcracks constitute an important aspect of microstructural damage i n a number of advanced materials, and therefore their characterization is of interest. The microcrack orientations are often anisotropic, an d there are strong correlations between their size and spatial orienta tion. In this paper, a fairly general and flexible statistical relatio nship is derived between the apparent bivariate distribution of size a nd orientation of microcrack traces observed in metallographic section s (which can be experimentally measured), and the true bivariate size and orientation distribution of microcracks in three-dimensional micro structure. There are no assumptions concerning anisotropy of microcrac ks, their sizes, orientations, thickness, and any correlations between size and orientation.