Title: Multi-energy X-ray CT and DCM for material microstructure characterisation and properties modelling
Abstract: Quantitative and sample-non-destructive (SND) characterization of 3D microscopic composition distribution in materials is important to a broad range of R&D disciplines. Although the X-ray CT and threshold image segmentation approach is widely used, it is subjective and imposes an arbitrary length-scale cut-off at the X-ray CT pixel size. This makes it inadequate for materials with fine structures smaller than the imaging pixels or with similar X-ray attenuation properties.
By integrating statistical physics and multi-energy quantitative X-ray CT, a data-constrained modelling (DCM) approach can be used to explicitly reconstructs 3D microscopic distributions of materials and incorporates fine structures below X-ray CT image resolution as voxel compositional partial volumes. i.e., the fine length-scale information below image pixel size is preserved (http://research.csiro.au/dcm). This offers a more accurate representation of material microstructure in 3D and enables more quantitative modelling of material properties. It has been implemented as a user-friendly DCM software for MS-Windows, which can also be used as a general-purpose 3D simulation tool with its plug-in feature. Recent applications of DCM include advanced materials, additive manufacturing, energy and mineral resources.