Computations of contact distributions for representation of microstructural spatial clustering

Material microstructures often exhibit non-uniform spatial arrangements of the particles/features. The extent of such spatial clustering depends on the processing conditions and it affects the material properties. Therefore, it is of interest to develop techniques to quantify and represent microstructural clustering. In this contribution, a digital image processing based computational technique is presented for estimation of microstructural contact distributions that are sensitive to spatial clustering of features in microstructures. The technique is applied for estimation of the contact distributions in a set of microstructures of metal matrix composites that have the same volume fraction and size distribution of SiC particles but different degrees of spatial clustering. It is shown that the spherical contact distributions clearly reveal the differences between these microstructures.