Segmented 3D Image of a Fiber Composite

Imaging the Wing of a Lightweight Glider with SEM

Imagine you could do without the iterative loop between design, testing, and property observation when designing materials? Creating structural materials requires you to understand damage initiation and failure mechanisms in structural components. Failures often nucleate inside the bulk, are unobservable until fracture is reached, occur on the microscopic scale, and can exhibit complex 3D characteristics. And as the nucleation processes are critical for engineering against failure, traditional bulk testing methods prove to be insufficient.

Mitigate these challenges in characterization and move towards microscopy as a complementary technique to bulk mechanical testing. Benefit from introducing different microscopes in a multi-modal workflow as a viable digital material testing approach.

• Start the workflow with a light microscope which conforms to standard testing approaches. Clearly distinguish the reinforcing fibers from the matrix. Observe small defects early with this technique.

• Employ a 3D X-ray microscopy as a second step. Examine internal structural damage of a carbon fiber-reinforced composite across multiple length scales, for example cracks in the material after being subjected to load. Extend the optical 2D imaging to 3D and ensure that the same region of interest (ROI) will be imaged to keep the datasets in the appropriate context. Use a multi-scale workflow with large field of view scanning at low resolution to guide the acquisition of subsequent higher resolution scans at targeted ROIs. Performing the workflow in a non-destructive fashion enables you to gain a better understanding of the microscale damage mechanisms that occur at very specific locations. And maintain the context of the larger, macroscale sample simultaneously.

• Finally, capture the finest length scale of information and find out the localized composition using a Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscope (FIB-SEM) to prepare and image your specimen further. With the help of correlative software, the FIB-SEM can be aligned to the same ROI as imaged by the optical and X-ray techniques. Retain the context of all data with each other.
  

Sub-micron Imaging to Highlight Cracks and Voids

Non-destructive 3D Imaging of Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC)

Reference List: Fiber Composites XRM Applications