The investigation of morphometric parameters of aluminium foams using micro-computed tomography

The development of different manufacturing techniques for foams, most especially metallic foams have opened a new market of opportunities for multifunctional cellular metallic materials, However, it is yet unclear how to quantitatively characterise the microstructure and internal architecture of foams precisely. In this paper, the potential of using micro-computed tomography in characterising the morphometric parameters of foams are explored. 3D morphometric parameters of different types of closed cell aluminium alloy foam have been characterised, and the effects of the measurement resolution, and the integration time on the measured morphometric parameters have been studied. The model based and model independent morphometric parameters are comparable with measurements using other characterisation techniques. We conclude that the new generations of micro-computed tomography equipment have versatile capability for a non-invasive and -destructive characterisation of foams. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.