A SIMULATION APPROACH OF PERMEABILITY DETERMINATION USING COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY SCANS

This paper presents a simulation approach to determine permeability of non-crimped carbon fibre fabrics by using computed tomography (CT) scans. In an image processing procedure the fabric is segmented into its constituents: fibre and gap. Then the domains are discretized by a voxel grid. Finally a Stokes solver is employed to solve the system of equations and to calculate the permeability. Three different methods of segmenting the CT scans have been investigated. A special focus is put on the variation of the permeability with respect to varying image processing parameters. All image processing procedures prove to be robust and well capable to segment the scanned material into its domains. The obtained permeability results are in good correlation with experimental results published for that group of fabrics.