Imaging Systems and Algorithms for the Numerical Characterization of 3D Shapes of Particle Aggregates

The properties of geomaterial aggregates, mainly flow and shear characteristics, are significantly dependent on the shapes of the particles in the mixture. 3D particle models that have been previously developed to quantify this dependence have proved complex and expensive. This paper describes an optical tomography technique for the acquisition of real particle data that can be characterized using 3D shape descriptors. The algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) is used to synthesize 3D particle shapes from 2D tomography projections. Results demonstrating the efficacy of the method on a set of sand mixtures are presented.