3D reconstruction and analysis of the fragmented grains in a composite material

Abstract : X-ray microtomography from solid propellant allows studying the microstructure of fragmented grains in damaged samples. A new reconstruction algorithm of fragmented grains for 3D images is introduced. Based on a watershed transform of a morphological closing of the input image, the algorithm can be used with different sets of markers. Two of them are compared. After the grain reconstruction, a multiscale segmentation algorithm is used to extract each fragment of the damaged grains. This allows an original quantitative study of the fragmentation of each grain in 3D. Experimental results on X-ray microtomographic images of a solid propellant fragmented under compression are presented and validated.