SPATIAL STATISTICS OF CREEP CAVITIES

The random spatial distribution of creep cavities plays an important r ole in probabilistic models of creep cavitation. In the present work, we propose a statistical model, which is a generalization of a hard-co re process, to describe this distribution. The predictions of the mode l are compared to experimental data obtained from synchrotron radiogra phy of the cavitated grain boundary of a copper bicrystal. The experim ental data are found to be in statistically good agreement with the pr edictions of the model. For the four sets of data considered, creep ca vity locations are found not to be uniformly distributed. They do, how ever, tend toward regularity with regard to nearest-neighbor spacings.