Abstract Scope |
Quantitative surface-based microscopy measurements of key and ubiquitous microstructural features (e.g., grains, fibers, internal porosity) is a foundational activity in materials engineering to establish process-to-structure-to-property relationships, as well as to provide ground truth measurements for other purposes (such as advancing nondestructive characterization methods). The need for rapid and unbiased microstructure measurements has spurred the materials community over the past three decades to develop automated microscopy methodologies to provide such information with little-or-no human intervention, which critically rely on robust data acquisition and data post-processing workflows. This contribution will present an overview of such workflows for microstructure quantification in 2D and 3D of structural materials using both reflective light and scanning electron microscope-based techniques, and highlight examples of quantitative measurements of microscale features and defects within mm-to-cm scale volumes. In addition, the contribution will discuss potential areas of improvement to further enhance digital microscopy workflows. |