A “step” in the right direction: Quantifying error in twinning analysis due to EBSD scan resolution

Abstract

Accurate evaluation of deformation twinning statistics is key when performing research on the twinning behavior of magnesium alloys or other HCP materials, and typically utilizes electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). However, many modern studies that perform EBSD for twinning analysis do not have a consistent step size used during EBSD data collection between studies, or do not report their step size at all. In this work, the effect of step size on the resultant twinning statistics calculated from the EBSD data was determined by comparing multiple scans of the same region with varying step size. Increasing the step size during data collection was found to increase the error of all considered twinning statistics, indicating a potential source of unquantified error in other studies. Additionally, a method for improving the accuracy from scans with coarse step sizes was considered and found to reduce error in most cases.