Improvements in the Quantitative Evaluation of Three-Dimensional Texture. I. The Nature of the Information Obtained from Pole Figures

The sources of indefiniteness in the orientation-distribution-function (ODF) description of crystalline texture are shown to result from the integral nature of the pole-figure measurement. An equipartition-area theorem is proved and it is shown that current methods use too few pole figures, which are measured to an unnecessarily high angular resolution. The experimental resolution is considered and the number of pole figures needed for ODF analysis is calculated as a function of the required ODF resolution.