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Introduction
The microstructure of a material has a large effect on its properties. In order to understand the properties of a material it is necessary to consider many things including the chemical compositions, proportions, shapes and types of phase present as well as the defect distributions and crystal structure. For a given micrograph and associated phase diagram it is often possible to ‘plot’ a cooling route, suggesting which phases would precipitate out first and connecting this to what is seen in the micrograph.