QUANTITATIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF SPATIAL ARRANGEMENT OF MICROPORES INCAST MICROSTRUCTURES

Spatial arrangement of micropores is an important geometric attribute of cast microstructures. The spatial arrangement of porosity is determ ined by the solidification processing parameters, and it affects the m echanical properties of cast components. Quantitative information of t he spatial arrangement of micropores is useful for modeling cast micro structures. In this contribution, a digital image analysis based exper imental technique is presented for unbiased quantitative characterizat ion of the spatial arrangement of microporosity in terms of the statis tical descriptors such as the first, the second, and the third nearest neighbor distance distribution of the pores observed in metallographi c sections of cast micro-structures, (C) Elsevier Science Inc., 1998.