Controlling spatial inhomogeneity in prototypical multiphase microstructures

A wide variety of real random composites can be studied by means of prototypes of multiphase microstructures with a controllable spatial inhomogeneity. To create them, we propose a versatile model of randomly overlapping super-spheres of a given radius and deformed in their shape by the parameter p. With the help of the so-called decomposable entropic measure, a clear dependence of the phase inhomogeneity degree on the values of the parameter p is found. Thus, a leading trend in changes of the phase inhomogeneity can be forecast. It makes searching for possible structure/property relations easier. For the chosen values of p, examples of two and three-phase prototypical microstructures show how the phase inhomogeneity degree evolves at different length scales. The approach can also be applied to preparing the optimal starting configurations in reconstructing real materials.
Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, published version