A Statistical Porosity Characterization Approach of Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Material Using Optical Microscopy and Neural Network

The intensified pursuit for lightweight solutions in the commercial vehicle industry increases the demand for method development of more advanced lightweight materials such as Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Composites (CFRP). The behavior of these anisotropic materials is challenging to understand and manufacturing defects could dramatically change the mechanical properties. Voids are one of the most common manufacturing defects; they can affect mechanical properties and work as initiation sites for damage. It is essential to know the micromechanical composition of the material to understand the material behavior. Void characterization is commonly conducted using optical microscopy, which is a reliable technique. In the current study, an approach based on optical microscopy, statistically characterizing a CFRP laminate with regard to porosity, is proposed. A neural network is implemented to efficiently segment micrographs and label the constituents: void, matrix, and fiber. A neural network minimizes the manual labor automating the process and shows great potential to be implemented in repetitive tasks in a design process to save time. The constituent fractions are determined and they show that constituent characterization can be performed with high accuracy for a very low number of training images. The extracted data are statistically analyzed. If significant differences are found, they can reveal and explain differences in the material behavior. The global and local void fraction show significant differences for the material used in this study and are good candidates to explain differences in material behavior.