Interpretable MA-island clusters and fingerprints relating bainite microstructures to composition and processing temperature

Abstract

Realising the affect of composition and processing condition on bainite microstructures is often challenging, owing to the intricate distribution of the constituent phases. In this work, scanning electron micrographs of non-isothermally transformed bainite, with martensite-austenite (MA) islands, are analysed to relate the microstructures to the composition and quench-stop temperature. The inadequacy of the MA-islands’ geometric features, namely aspect ratio, polygon area and compactness, in establishing this relation is made evident from Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence at the outset. Clustering the bainite microstructures, following a combination of feature extraction and dimensionality reduction, further fails to realise the affect of composition and processing temperature. Integrated machine-learning analysis of the individual MA islands, in contrast to the bainite microstructures, yields interpretable clusters with characteristically distinct size and morphology. These five clusters, referred to as fine- and coarse-dendrite, fine- and coarse-polygon and elongated, are exceptionally discernible and can be adopted to describe any MA island. Characterising the bainite microstructures, based on the distribution of the interpretable MA-island clusters, generates fingerprints that sufficiently relates the composition and processing conditions with the microstructures.