CHARACTERIZATION OF SPATIAL-DISTRIBUTION OF REINFORCEMENT IN POWDER-METALLURGY ROUTE AL SICP METAL-MATRIX COMPOSITES .1. TECHNIQUES BASED ON MICROSTRUCTURE/
Ic. Stone et P. Tsakiropoulos, CHARACTERIZATION OF SPATIAL-DISTRIBUTION OF REINFORCEMENT IN POWDER-METALLURGY ROUTE AL SICP METAL-MATRIX COMPOSITES .1. TECHNIQUES BASED ON MICROSTRUCTURE/, Materials science and technology, 11(3), 1995, pp. 213-221
Two techniques which rely on direct microstructural measurements to as
sess the quality of the spatial distribution of reinforcements in meta
l matrix composites are outlined in the present paper. The first techn
ique is based on the measurement of the distribution of interparticle
spacings of the reinforcement, and the second is based on the Dirichle
t tessellation construction. Both techniques are applied to Al-4Cu/20S
iC(p) (wt-%) metal matrix composites produced via a powder metallurgy
route. The results show that the widths of the interparticle spacing a
nd Dirichlet cell size distributions are a function of the level of mi
crostructural homogeneity. The techniques are not sufficiently sensiti
ve to small variations in spatial distribution.