Open Access

ARTICLE

Statistics of High Purity Nickel Microstructure From High Energy X-ray Diffraction Microscopy

C.M. Hefferan¹, S.F. Li¹, J. Lind¹, U. Lienert², A.D. Rollett³, P. Wynblatt³, R.M. Suter^1,3

1 Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA USA.
2 Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA.
3 Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

Computers, Materials & Continua 2009, 14(3), 209-220. https://doi.org/10.3970/cmc.2009.014.209

Abstract

We have measured and reconstructed via forward modeling a small volume of microstructure of high purity, well annealed nickel using high energy x-ray diffraction microscopy (HEDM). Statistical distributions characterizing grain orientations, intra-granular misorientations, and nearest neighbor grain misorientations are extracted. Results are consistent with recent electron backscatter diffraction measurements. Peaks in the grain neighbor misorientation angle distribution at 60 degrees (∑3) and 39 degrees (∑9) have resolution limited widths of ≈ 0.14 degree FWHM. The analysis demonstrates that HEDM can recover grain and grain boundary statistics comparable to OIM volume measurements; more extensive data sets will lead to full, five parameter grain boundary character distributions. Due to its non-destructive nature, HEDM can then watch, both statistically and through tracking of individual grains and boundaries, the evolution of such distributions with processing of the sample.

---

Keywords

---