SEPARATION OF THE INTER- AND INTRA-PARTICLE POROSITY IN IMAGES OF POWDER COMPACTS

Abstract

Powder metallurgy is a highly developed and cheap method of manufacturing reliable materials, either metallic, ceramic or composite. This process was used to make green compacts of iron powders with a high porosity level. This study is part of a project aimed at describing the relationships between mechanical properties and morphological features of such compacts, with particular attention paid to the shape of the grains and the compaction pressure. In this report, a method is proposed to separate the intra grain porosity from the cavities located between particles. The approach is based on the covariogram of images obtained from the surface of the compacts by means of a laser roughometer. To achieve this separation, a model of the structure is proposed which assumes that the distributions of the grains and of the intra-particle cavities are random and independent. Each distribution is characterized by two parameters. A satisfactory agreement is obtained between experimental and calculated covariograms after identification of these parameters.