Illustration of Texture with Ultrasonic Pole Figures

Materials are most often used in the form of polycrystalline aggregates. Preferential orientation of the grains or crystallites within such an aggregate is known as “texture”, and almost all methods of fabrication will tend to develop a texture to some degree. To differentiate among textures, it is desirable to describe and quantify them. One technique for doing this is the “pole figure”