Electron backscattered diffraction as a tool to quantify subgrains in deformed calcite.

In this work, we investigated processing methods to obtain subgrain sizes from electron backscattered diffraction data using samples of experimentally deformed calcite (CaCO(3)) polycrystals. The domain boundary hierarchy method, based on area measurements of domains enclosed by boundaries larger than a given misorientation angle, was applied to these calcite samples and was found to be limited by: (i) topological problems; (ii) undersampling of large grains; and (iii) artefacts caused by nonindexing. We tested two alternative methods that may reduce the problems: (i) the measured linear intercept hierarchy method, based on measurements of linear intercept between boundaries having larger misorientations than a given minimum angle; and (ii) the calculated linear intercept hierarchy method, based on the total length of boundaries having misorientations larger than a given minimum angle. The measured linear intercept hierarchy method was found to produce results more representative for the microstructure than the calculated linear intercept hierarchy method, because the calculated linear intercept hierarchy method has a significant uncertainty related to the grid-based nature of the measurements. Preliminary results on calcite suggest that the measured linear intercept hierarchy method is related, in a complex way, to deformation conditions such as stress, strain and temperature as well as to the characteristics of subgrain rotation and grain boundary migration processes.