Microstructure quantification procedures in liquid-phase sintered materials

The quantification of sintered microstructures is an inherent part of powde r metallurgy. Often a means to explain the effects of process variations wi th respect to sintered properties is needed. Quantification of grain size i n the microstructure is an essential part of that effort. IF satisfactory m odels exist, then the effort might be simple. Along those lines, three-dime nsional grain size distributions can be obtained from two-dimensional grain section distributions by using a new forward transformation method. The te chnique is applied to sintered microstructures to verify the procedure, but the method is not limited to a particular material. A computer simulation program is developed. The initial three-dimensional grain size distribution s are obtained from a backward method. The method can handle grains with di fferent shapes, dihedral angles. and contact numbers. Both the Weibull and normal distribution functions are used to process the data. The results sho w that dihedral angle and contact number greatly affect the grain size dist ribution causing the three-dimensional grain size distribution to become na rrower at high solid volume fractions. (C) 1999 Acta Metallurgica Inc. Publ ished by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.