RECONSTRUCTION, VISUALIZATION, AND QUANTITATIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF MULTI-PHASE THREE-DIMENSIONAL MICROSTRUCTURES OF CAST ALUMINUM ALLOYS

摘要

Serial sectioning technique is well known for reconstruction of three-dimensional microstructures of opaque materials. During the recent years, techniques have also been developed for reconstruction of high fidelity large volume segments of three-dimensional microstructures using montage serial sections; robot assisted automated acquisitions of montage serial sections are also reported. Nonetheless, the past work of three-dimensional microstructure reconstruction from serial sections is restricted to microstructures containing at the most two phases, or in the multi-phase microstructures, the three-dimensional geometry of only one or two phases is reconstructed. In this contribution, we present three-dimensional reconstruction of multi-phase microstructures of a series of cast Al-alloys containing porosity, Si particles, and numerous intermetallic inclusion phases. All the phases are segmented and separately reconstructed, rendered, and quantitatively characterized in three-dimensions, which clearly brings out the complex three-dimensional morphologies of all phases. The technique is useful for characterization of any multi-phase three-dimensional microstructure.