Mesh generation of porous metals from X-ray computed tomography volume data

摘要

Recently, to meet the requirement of machine industry, there has been an increased focus on the development of porous metal as a high-strength material despite its low density. To evaluate its properties and quality, material testing is usually conducted. However, it is more efficient to perform computer simulation evaluations using finite element analysis. The X-ray computed-tomography scanning technique enables us to obtain the information regarding the internal structure of the metal. Furthermore, a reconstruction algorithm produces volume data of the test object. In general, conventional methods are utilized to generate mesh data from volume data for finite element analysis, but a key drawback is that they generate too many elements, resulting in high computational cost. We propose an approach to generate meshes for porous structures by modeling each pore using spheres from volume data.