Análise modal de materiais compósitos

Abstract

A modal analysis procedure for composites is presented in this work. Procedures employed to aim this objective can be divided into three groups: mass-balance, image analysis and point-counting. The mass-balance methods are based on the determination of the chemical composition of the sample and on the prior knowledge of the composition of each phase, so to determine the phase concentration by solving a matrix of linear equations. Unfortunately, sometimes it is not possible, specially when two or more phases presentes similar compositions. Image analysis is done using different contrast settings to dicriminate phases and to estimate its volume fraction, based on the area filled by each one. The method may lead to wrong results due to overlapping grey levels. One may employ x-ray fluorescence maps to avoid such errors, although the technique is often very slow. The procedure proposed in this work uses the point-counting method with an automated phase identification, using x-ray spectral data, by means of a formerly trainned neural network. The phase quantities are estimated from the identification frequency of each phase in several points of the sample. The precision of the analysis can be controlled by the number of acquisition points. Almost all procedure has been automated. Data analysis is performed by a software ("Sherlock") developed for this purpose. To evaluate the proposed procedure, ceramic composite samples and a metal composite sample were analysed. These analyses supported the precision evaluation and some limitations of the technique, which may be compared to X-ray element mapping. Further, the proposed procedure can deal with other sources of phase data, making it easy to include organic phase identification into the modal analysis of composite material.