A Morphological Study of Energetic Materials: Analysis of Micro-computed Tomography Images to Generate Representative Microstructures

Élodie Kaeshammer (1, 2, 3) , Petr Dokládal (1) , François Willot (1) , B. Erzar (2) , Steve Belon (2) , Lionel Borne (3)

1 CMM - Centre de Morphologie Mathématique
2 DAM/GRAMAT - GRAMAT
3 ISL - Institut franco-allemand de recherches de Saint-Louis

In previous work, impact experiments were performed at ISL on three energetic materials composed of 70% in weight of RDX particles embedded in a wax matrix. These materials differ by the microstructural properties of the explosive particles. The experimental results reveal that the detonation thresholds, and so the sensitivity to shock, are different for each sample. To better understand these results, we characterize the microstructural properties of these compositions and generate virtual microstructures representative of the real microstructures. First, the microstructures of the three materials are imaged with micro-computed tomography (µCT). The 3D µCT volumes are filtered and segmented. Image processing results are crosschecked with experimental analyses conducted at ISL (weight fraction, particles diameter distribution and particles bulk density distribution) to ensure the reliability of the segmentations. Virtual microstructures of each material are generated with real grains of RDX extracted from the segmented volumes. The virtual microstructures are built to be consistent with the µCT segmented volumes. The morphological granulometry and the spatial covariance of both real and virtual microstructures are compared to verify that the numerical materials are representative of the real materials.

Domaines: Matériaux

Élodie Kaeshammer, Petr Dokládal, François Willot, B. Erzar, Steve Belon, et al.. A Morphological Study of Energetic Materials: Analysis of Micro-computed Tomography Images to Generate Representative Microstructures. Europyro 2019 44th International Pyrotechnics Seminar, Jun 2019, Tours, France. ⟨hal-02139567⟩