Quantitative neutron diffraction texture measurement applied to α-phase alumina and Ti₃AlC₂

Orientation distribution functions, essential for making a quantitative connection between single-crystal and polycrystal properties, have been determined for extruded α-phase alumina, hot-pressed Ti₃AlC₂ and cold isostatically pressed Ti₃AlC₂ using experimental pole figures recorded on the fixed-wavelength neutron diffractometer KOWARI. Some practical improvements to the calculation of the pole-figure density from the raw area-detector data, and for constructing pole figures on an n × n° hemispherical grid, are presented. The textures give some insight into particle flow during manufacture. Directly measured material textures were compared with one-dimensional pole density functions, such as the March and Rietveld functions commonly used for the correction of preferred orientation in Rietveld refinements, as a means of assessing the utility of the latter for the computation of diffraction elastic constants and other polycrystal properties from a given set of single-crystal properties.