CHARACTERIZATION OF SPATIAL-DISTRIBUTION OF REINFORCEMENT IN POWDER-METALLURGY ROUTE AL SICP METAL-MATRIX COMPOSITES .1. TECHNIQUES BASED ON MICROSTRUCTURE/

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.