STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE LOCAL STRUT THICKNESS OF OPEN CELL FOAMS

Open cell foams are formed by an interconnected network of struts whose thickness varies locally. These variations were shown to have an impact on the elastic and thermal properties of the foam. In this paper we quantify the local strut thickness by means of micro computed tomography (µCT) imaging. We introduce a skeletonization based topological decomposition of the foam structure into its vertices and struts. This allows to estimate the thickness of individual strut segments by the Euclidean distance transform, where an appropriate correction for struts with nonspherical cross-sectional shape is applied. Conflating these estimates based on the strut lengths results in a strut thickness profile for the entire foam. Polynomial models for the strut thickness profile are investigated by means of a regression analysis.