High Resolution Industrial CT Systems: Advances and Comparison with Synchrotron-Based CT

摘要

Nowadays, X-ray tube-based high-resolution CT systems are widely used in scientific research and industrial applications. Compact XCT systems are available that can reach resolutions down to 1 μm and below. But the potential, convenience and economy of these lab systems is often underestimated. The present paper shows the comparison of sophisticated conventional μCT with synchrotron radiation-based μCT (SRμCT). The different aspects and characteristics of both approaches like spatial and density resolution, penetration depth, scanning time or sample size is described in detail. Beside this, the advances in technology of industrial high resolution CT systems are shown. The paper also presents recent advances in the area of industrial high resolution CT systems from phoenix product line of General Electric. All major parts are designed to make the system extremely stable during the data acquisition process. So, the system is equipped with granite base and very precise rotation unit. The unique nanofocus tube technology with build-in cooling system stabilizes the tube and at the same time the diamond based target allows high photon flux at very small focal spot sizes. The unique detector with excellent contrast resolution and SNR is also thermally stabilized. Also, the user friendliness is increased through the fully automated process chain starting with detector calibration and going through acquisition and data reconstruction process with automated volume data evaluation The application results of this new technology show its high potentials for usage of the state of the art laboratory systems in the industrial and scientific application fields of material research, metrology, petro-industry, etc. To compare the potentials of laboratory based CT with synchrotron based CT, different samples were used: e.g. a low-carbon steel sample, and an aluminium multi-phase sample (AlMg_5Si_7) and some other. Concerning measurement costs, scanning volume, accessibility and user-friendliness sub-μXCT has significant advantages in comparison to synchrotron-XCT.