Controlling spatial inhomogeneity in prototypical multiphase microstructures

TL;DR

This paper introduces a versatile model for creating multiphase microstructures with controllable spatial inhomogeneity, aiding the study of structure-property relations in composite materials.

Contribution

It proposes a new model using overlapping super-spheres and a decomposable entropic measure to control and predict phase inhomogeneity in microstructures.

Findings

Phase inhomogeneity depends on parameter p.

The model allows forecasting of inhomogeneity trends.

Application to real material reconstruction is demonstrated.

Abstract

A wide variety of real random composites can be studied by means of prototypes of multiphase microstructures with a controllable spatial inhomogeneity. To create them, we propose a versatile model of randomly overlapping super-spheres of a given radius and deformed in their shape by the parameter p. With the help of the so-called decomposable entropic measure, a clear dependence of the phase inhomogeneity degree on the values of the parameter p is found. Thus, a leading trend in changes of the phase inhomogeneity can be forecast. It makes searching for possible structure/property relations easier. For the chosen values of p, examples of two and three-phase prototypical microstructures show how the phase inhomogeneity degree evolves at different length scales. The approach can also be applied to preparing the optimal starting configurations in reconstructing real materials.