Quantitative microstructure analysis of tungsten heavy alloys (W–Ni–Cu) during initial stage liquid phase sintering

Microstructure analysis plays an important role in studying liquid phase sintering process. In the current study, quantitative microstructure analysis was performed on tungsten heavy alloys with different Ni:Cu ratios using an advanced image analysis system. The measured microstructural parameters include grain size, neck size, pore size, porosity, connectivity, contiguity, neck size ratio, mean curvature and more importantly, their statistical distributions. Various statistical distribution functions were used to fit the measured data, and the model parameters were obtained. The effect of alloy composition and the corresponding effective sintering time on microstructure was discussed. The analysis results are important for studying the fundamental mechanisms of sintering, modeling and predicting liquid phase sintering process.