Development of a computed tomography system capable of tracking high-velocity unbounded material through a reconstruction volume.

Highlights • Development of a state-of-the-art computed tomography system capable of tracking ballistic-velocity unbounded material through a three-dimensional coordinated system. • Utilizes flash X-radiography technology to penetrate outer material layers. • Utilizes customized iterative reconstruction routines within Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's "Livermore Tomography Tools" software suite to computationally reconstruct multiple X-ray projections into a 3-D volume. • Demonstrates the first example using a bullet penetrating an aluminum plate. Abstract The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed a high speed computed tomography system that is capable of tracking unbounded material flux through a reconstruction volume at ballistic rates. It achieves this feat by creating three individual time-registered volume reconstructions throughout the duration of a single dynamic event. Each individual volume reconstruction is computed from five attenuation projections, which are collected using five flash X-ray sources and five digital imaging plate detectors. This work summarizes the numerous complexities in combining the 15 sources and 15 detectors into a single diagnostic, the complexities of analyzing multiple reconstruction volumes from a limited number of views, and complications associated with designing an experiment to fit within the bounding conditions of the diagnostic. It continues to demonstrate an example of how free-flowing material propagates through a reconstruction volume during a bullet/target interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]