In situ delamination studies using X-ray microtomography

Considering existing microscopical techniques to study microstructures of materials, one can find that non-destructive information from the internal structure of an object in natural conditions can be obtained by transmission X-ray microscopy. Combination of X-ray transmission technique with tomographical reconstruction allows getting three-dimensional information about the internal microstructure. In this case any internal area can be reconstructed as a set of flat cross sections, which can be used to analyse the two- and three-dimensional morphological parameters. For X-ray methods the contrast in the images is a mixed combination of density and compositional information, which provides means for non-destructive reconstruction of the internal structure. The project investigates experimental results of crack propagation and fibre bridging in glass fibre epoxy samples that were collected in situ during loading in an X-ray scanner. (Ryszard Pyrz, Jens Nygaard)