Identification of Plane and Spatial Clustered Distributions of Particulate Inclusions.

In the present work a numerical procedure for identification of clustered distributions of spherical inclusions is presented for two- and three-dimensional cases. The procedure is based on the plane (2D) and spatial (3D) tessellation of the observation window and parameters that characterize a relative density of inclusions within a cluster and background. The identification is performed on simulated dispersions with different radii distributions of spherical inclusions and different volume fractions. The procedure can be applied to images of real microstructures obtained using X-ray microtomography and it is extended so that percolation paths in 2D and 3D can be detected. This might be important to study transport phenomena in polymers filled with particulate inclusions. © 2004 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]