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X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam is widely used in building and construction applications for thermal and acoustic insulation. This material is nearly transparent for X-rays, making it difficult to characterize its pore structure in 3D with X-ray tomography. Because of this difficulty, the pore netwo...

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Autores principales: Meftah, Redouane, Van Stappen, Jeroen, Berger, Sylvain, Jacqus, Gary, Laluet, Jean-Yves, Guering, Paul-Henri, Van Hoorebeke, Luc, Cnudde, Veerle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6630325/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31212910
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma12121944
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author Meftah, Redouane
Van Stappen, Jeroen
Berger, Sylvain
Jacqus, Gary
Laluet, Jean-Yves
Guering, Paul-Henri
Van Hoorebeke, Luc
Cnudde, Veerle
author_facet Meftah, Redouane
Van Stappen, Jeroen
Berger, Sylvain
Jacqus, Gary
Laluet, Jean-Yves
Guering, Paul-Henri
Van Hoorebeke, Luc
Cnudde, Veerle
author_sort Meftah, Redouane
collection PubMed
description Expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam is widely used in building and construction applications for thermal and acoustic insulation. This material is nearly transparent for X-rays, making it difficult to characterize its pore structure in 3D with X-ray tomography. Because of this difficulty, the pore network is often not investigated and is, thus, poorly known. Since this network controls different physical properties, such as the sound absorption, it is crucial to understand its overall structure. In this manuscript, we show how to reveal the pore network of EPS foams through the combination of high resolution X-ray tomography (micro-CT) and saturation techniques. The foams were saturated with CsCl-brine, which acts as a contrasting agent in X-ray micro-CT imaging. This allowed us to separate the beads, making up the foam, from the pore network. Based on the 3D micro-CT results, we were able to assess a representative elementary volume for the polystyrene, which allows for calculating the acoustical parameters from the Johnson–Champoux–Allard (JCA) model, the pore and bead size distribution. The 3D data was also used as input to simulate sound absorption curves. The parametric study showed that an increase in the bead size influenced the sound absorption of the material. We showed that, by doubling the diameter of beads, the absorption coefficient was doubled in certain ranges of frequency.
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spelling pubmed-66303252019-08-19 X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam Meftah, Redouane Van Stappen, Jeroen Berger, Sylvain Jacqus, Gary Laluet, Jean-Yves Guering, Paul-Henri Van Hoorebeke, Luc Cnudde, Veerle Materials (Basel) Article Expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam is widely used in building and construction applications for thermal and acoustic insulation. This material is nearly transparent for X-rays, making it difficult to characterize its pore structure in 3D with X-ray tomography. Because of this difficulty, the pore network is often not investigated and is, thus, poorly known. Since this network controls different physical properties, such as the sound absorption, it is crucial to understand its overall structure. In this manuscript, we show how to reveal the pore network of EPS foams through the combination of high resolution X-ray tomography (micro-CT) and saturation techniques. The foams were saturated with CsCl-brine, which acts as a contrasting agent in X-ray micro-CT imaging. This allowed us to separate the beads, making up the foam, from the pore network. Based on the 3D micro-CT results, we were able to assess a representative elementary volume for the polystyrene, which allows for calculating the acoustical parameters from the Johnson–Champoux–Allard (JCA) model, the pore and bead size distribution. The 3D data was also used as input to simulate sound absorption curves. The parametric study showed that an increase in the bead size influenced the sound absorption of the material. We showed that, by doubling the diameter of beads, the absorption coefficient was doubled in certain ranges of frequency. MDPI 2019-06-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6630325/ /pubmed/31212910 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma12121944 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Meftah, Redouane
Van Stappen, Jeroen
Berger, Sylvain
Jacqus, Gary
Laluet, Jean-Yves
Guering, Paul-Henri
Van Hoorebeke, Luc
Cnudde, Veerle
X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam
title X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam
title_full X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam
title_fullStr X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam
title_full_unstemmed X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam
title_short X-ray Computed Tomography for Characterization of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) Foam
title_sort x-ray computed tomography for characterization of expanded polystyrene (eps) foam
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6630325/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31212910
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma12121944
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