| Abstract Scope |
In the study of sintered microstructures, pore evolution, size, and connectivity are relevant for the fabrication of porous structures for filtration, lightweight, and functional applications. While stereology measurements allow to estimate the mean pore size and separation there is usually a high deviation associated with the difference between necked and coarse regions. Contrarily, pore boundary tessellation is a technique devised for quantifying local homogeneity and minimum pore distance. By analyzing each pore and its respective tessellated cell for various sintering conditions, parameter windows can be devised for pore network breakage, shrinkage, and elimination. This study analyses a sintered Ni-based alloy to understand its sintering behavior with respect to void evolution for porous applications. Results suggest that the tessellated nearest-neighbor pore separation is in-between stereological grain size and pore separation for densities above 75%, while for all cases the local cell density appears higher with this 2D measurement than Archimedes density. |