Applications of pattern recognition for dendritic microstructures

The Primary Dendrite Arm Spacing (PDAS) is the most important length scale in directionally solidified single crystal alloys. It determines the propensity for defect formation, solution heat treatment times and mechanical properties of the material. In this work a CMSX4 single crystal sample was imaged under a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). An automatic dendritic mapping (DenMap) algorithm using Normalised Cross-Correlation (NCC) is combined with Shape-Limited Primary Spacing (SLPS) to determine the local nearest neighbour dendrites and the corresponding dendritic packing. The algorithm located the dendritic centres, calculated the local PDAS, packing pattern, and relationship between PDAS and packing pattern for 256 dendrites in 1 minute 10 seconds. This is the first fully automatic method to produce a clear Gaussian distribution of local PDAS and packing pattern; thus, enabling rapid data gathering potential for single-crystal microstructures.