A Computer Simulation of the Hard-Metal Structure: the Interpretation of Structural Features

Abstract

The intercept length measurement of WC grains in hardmetal alloys is simulated in computer. The distribution of intercept length is related to the distribution of WC grain size, but the latter can not be measured from a sintered alloy. It must be interpreted from the intercept length measurement. By using simulation, the complex grain size distributions of real alloys can be decomposed into more simple distributions, as the monomodal ones. The analysis of the monomodal structures is used to interpret the more complex structures. It is found that the lognormal intercept length distribution measured in hardmetal alloys in practice does not necessarily correspond to a lognormal grain size distribution, as commonly reported. The lognormal-like format of the intercept length distribution curve of real alloys is a natural trend of structures with multimodal grain size distributions.