The necessity of X-ray computed tomography to reveal the hierarchical structure of materials

Two recent developements of μCT to reveal the hierarchical structure of materials are presented. In the first case study, the determination of the permeability of a non-crimp carbon textile reinforcement using simulations of the fluid dynamics with μCT based voxel models is revealed. The voxel models are constructed from the μCT images of the material samples using a statistical algorithm for image segmentation, based on the Gaussian mixture model. The method is architecture independent and allows studying the variability of the permeability for different unit cells of the textile. In the second case study, the use of contrast agents for the visualization and quantification of soft biological tissues is described. More specifically, contrast-enhanced μCT (CE-CT) facilitates the distinction between bone from cartilage, bone marrow and blood vessels in implanted biomaterials that were seeded with osteoprogenitor cells, to be screened as potential therapy for the healing of large bone defects.

Publication year:2017

Accessibility:Closed