Reverse Engineering of Materials using Image Processing Methods for CAD-Material Integration

Integration of material composition, microstructure, and mechanical properties with geometry information enables many product development activities, including design, analysis, and manufacturing. In this paper, we investigate the application of image processing methods for constructing models of material microstructure. These microstructure models can be integrated into CAD models to enable the utilization of material process-structure-property relationships during CAD modeling. Engineering design is enabled by integration of computational materials design methods with these relationships. Using 2D images and 3D voxel datasets, the image processing methods can be used to find microstructure features, such as grain boundaries or particle or fiber reinforcements, by finding edges and extracting features from those edges. This paper will focus on three different image processing methods, which will be applied to microstructure images of materials fabricated by additive manufacturing.