Quantification of Mechanical Twins in Metallographic Images of Twinning-Induced Plasticity Steels Using a New Image Processing Method

A new image-processing method based on block-gradient segmentation was proposed to measure the volume fraction of mechanical twins in metallographic images. The processing results showed that this automatic method could be used for rapid and effective measure of the twin-volume fractions of twinning-induced plasticity steels in metallographic images under different strain conditions. The entire processing time for each image is relatively short, which would benefit researchers processing a large number of metallographic images. This method may pave a way to develop a simple, effective plug-in to measure rapidly the twin-volume fractions in the software for metallographic observations, and it would be beneficial for preliminary analysis of microstructural evolutions and subsequent characterization of mechanical twins by high-resolution microscopy using electron microscopy.