Automated quantification of reinforcement dispersion in B4C/Al metal matrix composites

Abstract

This study proposes an automated quantification technique for reinforcement dispersion in metal matrix composites. While a fine and homogeneous dispersion of reinforcements is necessary to achieve an optimum reinforcing effect in metal matrix composites, there have been few studies on the quantitative measurement of reinforcement dispersion. The proposed technique extracts reinforcement information from a given microscopic image through image analysis with minimized human interruption and quantifies the reinforcement dispersion automatically using a statistical approach. The feasibility of the proposed technique is shown by analyzing the effect of the hot rolling process on the reinforcement dispersion in a B4C/Al metal matrix composite and comparing it with the as-cast state.