Quantitative structural characterization of aluminium foams by micro computer tomography

摘要

The paper presents the three dimensional analysis of the geometric structure of different aluminium foams by means of micro tomography at spatial resolutions of 10 μm using a synchrotron radiation based setup, and 100 μm using a tabletop cone beam setup, respectively. The most important methods for the calculation of foam structure parameters by means of 3D image processing methods, like feature segmentation and labelling as well as granulometry are described and applied to different closed-cell Al-foams produced by a powder-metallurgical processing route. The analysis steps can be used as a standard procedure to characterize the structure of closed as well as open cell foams or other kind of porous materials like e.g. sponges. As an example, the temporal development of foams during their ageing could be observed by ex-situ determination of the geometric structure parameters.