Estimation of Particle Size Distribution in Materials in the Case of Spheroidal Particles Using Quantitative Microscopy

In this paper, an estimation method is proposed for the size distribution of particles in materials. The configuration of particles is assumed to be spheroidal and all observed information is gathered from cutting planes. The apparent size distribution measured from 2D is corrected to the 3D true size distribution, then the expected size distribution can be estimated from a small size up to an extreme size. This estimation method is most versatile, and involves Saltycov's method and extreme statistics at the same time. The procedure is applied to an artificial material with a given particle size distribution in computer simulation in order to examine its validity. The estimated results are compared with the given distribution, and the validity of the method is confirmed.