ASSESS VIABILITY OF MICRO-CT FOR SOIL MICROSTRUCTURE STUDIES

这个子项目是众多研究子项目之一

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The microstructure of sands can provide significant insight into macroscale material response. There have been previous studies that use CT to quantify the microstructure of sands. The study of soil microstructure using conventional CT suffers from tradeoffs between resolution, penetration depth, and specimen size. To circumvent these issues, the PI has used a destructive forensic technique that involves resin impregnation of sand specimens followed by sectioning and polishing of coupons for subsequent image capture and analysis. This method produces high quality results at extremely high resolutions, but is labor-intensive, slow, and provides only statistical information regarding soil microstructure (i.e., the location and orientation of each individual particle is not known). Being able to measure the location, shape, and orientation of every particle in an assembly would allow for calibration and verification of numerical models and would provide a means for rapid simulation of a wide array of laboratory tests. The PI would like to image a single sand specimen at the Duke Center for In Vivo Microscopy to assess the viability of micro-CT for soil microstructure studies. If this proves to be a viable method for quanifying sands on the microscale, proposals will be submitted to grant agencies interested in funding microscale research on granular materials, such as the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.