Description
Introduction: Additive manufacturing (AM) processes allow components to be directly produced from computer aided design (CAD) models by dividing them into thin two dimensional (2D) slices, which are built sequentially on top of one another [1]. Porosity plays a critical role in determining the mechanical behavior of additively and conventionally manufactured metal components. Defects such as voids decrease the strength and fatigue life of these components, which can limit the application of AM.
Until the advent of serial sectioning, classical stereological methods that extrapolate information from 2D images were used to quantify porosity from microstructural analyses. The underestimation of pore sizes that results when only a 2D section through a porous body is measured is illustrated by the sketch in Figure 1. For any given pore that is intersected by a plane, only rarely will the plane intersect the pore at a true diameter and in most cases, the plane will intersect at a section through the pore where the diameter of the exposed circle of intersection is smaller than the true diameter of the pore.
Authors: Veeraraghavan Sundar, Satya Ganti, and Bryan Turner
Keywords: Serial Sectioning, Three Dimensional (3D) Microstructure, Porosity, Stereology, Automated Serial Sectioning, Robo-Met.3D, Porosity, Additively Manufactured Alloys, 3D Reconstruction