Quantitative Determination of Microstructural Inhomgeneity for Directional Particle Distribution

The characterization and quantitative analysis of inhomogeneous discontinuous microstructures is a practically important task in metallography because of its high relevance for technical alloys, particularly in the fields of quality control and incoming materials inspection. In addition, representative one-dimensional model-type distributions provide input data for simulated computations, e.g. those of diffusion controlled processes in thermal treatment technologies or in characterizing pore distributions in the sector of damage mechanisms. The present article explains a method for characterizing inhomogeneous particle arrangements, which is based on a digital image analysis of light microphotographs in metallography. This article proposes a suitable parameter for microstructure evaluations. A simple calculation method allows deriving a realistic one-dimensional model-type distribution. The method is applied to rolling bearing steel 100Cr6 in an exemplary manner.