Microstructure

Figs. 1 and 2 provide a series of 2-D images located at slice z = 100 from the 256³ microstructures. In each image set, the upper left image is the as received data, the upper right shows the image after the filtering process, and the lower middle image provides the resultant image after the binarization process. In both cases, the large improvement in image quality obtained via the filtering process is clearly evident. To the viewer's eye, the segmentation into porosity and solid provided in the binary image appears quite reasonable at the assigned porosities of 20 % and 16 %, for the clinker and lime silica bricks, respectively. While the pore space appears disconnected in the two-dimensional images, the 3-D binary images shown in Fig. 3 clearly illustrate that the porosity is percolated for both bricks. These 3-D images (50 pixel x 50 pixel x 50 pixel) illustrate the central portions of the 3-D microstructures which were selected for computation of the materials' transfer coefficients.

Figure 1: Original, processed, and binary images for the clinker brick. Thresholded porosity is 20 %. Image size is 256 pixels x 256 pixels or 1.7 mm x 1.7 mm.

Figure 2: Original, processed, and binary images for the lime silica brick. Thresholded porosity is 16 %. Image size is 256 pixels x 256 pixels or 1.7 mm x 1.7 mm.

Figure 3: 3-D binary images of clinker (top) and lime silica (bottom) bricks. Images are 50 pixels x 50 pixels x 50 pixels in size from the central portion of each microstructure.