High resolution micro-computed tomography imaging and modelling of porous copper sample

Porous metals have always been meticulously studied as they have a bright prospect in the future due to their extremely large solid-fluid contact that enhances heat transfer medium and improves cooling density. In this study, X-ray (Computed tomography) μCT-Scanning usually employed in medical imaging was used on 1.0 cm³ porous copper sample to permit near-exact reconstruction of the sample to be made and past studies applied on metallic foams. Then, sets of image enhancement techniques, “Gaussian”, “median” and “edge detect” filter were used to distinguish the sample from the noises that occur on the tomogram from the μCT-scanning such as “salt and pepper”. These steps of image modelling has allowed a more accurate geometry of the sample to be obtained compared to normal practices that assumes symmetrical model geometry for a porous material. A clear representation of the solid-air pore structure externally and internally was obtained. Meshing of this sample was done using SIMPLEWARE and refined using ICEM CFD. Due to the complexity of the sample structure, small pore size and high number of pore per inch (PPI) of the sample, a mix of tetragonal mesh for the surface and hexagonal mesh on the internal part of the sample was done and allowed the pore features to be preserved from the original image models during the meshing. However the current procedures using SIMPLEWARE only allowed a meshing quality of about 0.08751 to be obtained but this can be improved by refining the mesh parameters.