Estimation of particle size distribution from cross-sectional particle diameter on the cutting plane

To control highly functional sintered materials, it is necessary to evaluate particle size segregation within materials. In the present study, a new method for estimating particle size distribution is proposed; this method considers the occurrence probability of the cutting diameter. The proper particle size distribution in a particle bed was estimated by calculating a matrix consisting of the occurrence probability and the distribution of particle diameters measured on a cutting plane. The estimated particle size distribution was smoothed using the Phillips–Twomey method. A cavity-filling simulation was carried out to verify the validity of the proposed method using the Distinct Element Method. The particle size distribution estimated by this method correlated well with the actual particle size distribution. The effect of particle size distributions with various geometrical standard deviations on the accuracy of estimated values was also investigated. The accuracy increased as the geometric standard deviation increased, and there was an optimum particle size bin number for a specific particle distribution. It was found that a large bin number and a large number of measured particles were required to obtain a higher accuracy for narrow size distributions.