Quantitative Study on Nonmetallic Inclusion Particles in Steels by Automatic Image Analysis With Extreme Values Method

The presence of nonmetallic inclusion particles which appear during steelmaking process is harmful to the properties of steels, which is mainly as a function of some aspects such as size, volume fraction, shape, and distribution of these particles. The automatic image analysis technique is one of the most important tools for the quantitative determination of these parameters. The classical Student approach and the Extreme Values Method (EVM) were used for the inclusion size and shape determination and the evaluation of distance between the inclusion particles. The results thus obtained indicated that there were significant differences in the characteristics of the inclusion particles in the analyzed products. Both methods achieved results with some differences, indicating that EVM could be used as a faster and more reliable statistical methodology.