3D Geometric modeling of Aluminum based foam using micro Computed Tomography technique

Abstract

Abstract X-Ray micro Computed Tomography (µCT) technique has been applied to reconstruct 3D volume data which was subsequently used to generate 3D geometrical model of Duocel® Aluminum based closed cell foam. The tiff image set obtained from µCT was processed using open source software Avizo® and PTC Creo® to generate the Computer-aided-design (CAD) model. The model has been shown to mesh in a commercial software ANSYS® which is a precursor to engineering analysis. With the aid of software the porosity of the foam model has been ascertained at 68.5% which lies in the range of values specified by the foam supplier. This work demonstrates that µCT is an effective technique to reconstruct the complex geometrical and topological features of closed cell structures which are otherwise difficult to capture.