A Markov random field approach for microstructure synthesis
Ashish Kumar, Lily Nguyen, Marc DeGraef, Veera Sundararaghavan · Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering · 2016
Abstract We test the notion that many microstructures have an underlying stationary probability distribution. The stationary probability distribution is ubiquitous: we know that different windows taken from a polycrystalline microstructure are generally ‘statistically similar’. To enable computation of such a probability distribution, microstructures are represented in the form of undirected probabilistic graphs called Markov Random Fields (MRFs). In the model, pixels take up integer or vector states and interact with multiple neighbors over a window. Using this lattice structure, algorithms are developed to sample the conditional probability density for the state of each pixel given the known states of its neighboring pixels. The sampling is performed using reference experimental images. 2D microstructures are artificially synthesized using the sampled probabilities. Statistical features such as grain size distribution and autocorrelation functions closely match with those of the experimental images. The mechanical properties of the synthesized microstructures were computed using the finite element method and were also found to match the experimental values.