Statistical characterization of microcellular polyurethane foams microstructure based on 2D and 3D image analysis
Matthieu Le Saux, Jean-Baptiste Le Bail, Justin Becker, Célia Caër, Pierre Charrier, V. Le Saux, Laurent Mahéo, Yann Marco · Journal of Cellular Plastics · 2023
This paper presents protocols developed to quantitatively characterize the cellular microstructure of microcellular polyurethane foams, from scanning electron microscopy (2D) and X-ray micro-computed tomography (2D and 3D) data. The objectives are to provide, for both techniques: (i) a detailed description of the analysis steps based on open source Python algorithms; (ii) a method for automatic, robust and objective detection of the cells to limit user’s biases; (iii) a statistical description of fraction, size, shape and spatial distribution of cells. The study considers 12 samples with densities ranging from about 400 to 600 kg m−3and pore sizes from a few micrometers to several hundred micrometers. In addition, the database obtained is used to investigate the reliability of 2D measurements to describe the cellular microstructure statistics.