In-situ synchrotron computed tomography images of a tensile test on a carbon fiber-epoxy composite for mechanical damage analysis

Using synchrotron computed tomography, we have obtained 3D images of a carbon fiber-epoxy composite laminate loaded under tension. A double-edge notched specimen with a notch section area of ~ 1 mm × 1 mm is cut using waterjet machining from the [904/05]s laminate with 7-µm nominal fiber diameter. It was loaded under continuous tension, with a deformation rate of ~ 1.4 μm/s, and in-situ scanned with a propagation distance of 60 mm, a beam energy of 20 kV, and 1000 projections per scan, each with an exposure time of 9 ms. The magnification was 10×, and the voxel size was 1.1 μm. The test was conducted at the TOMCAT beamline of the Swiss Light Source (SLS) in Villigen, Switzerland. The reconstruction was performed using an absorption-based algorithm provided by SLS. Eight 3D image (out of ~60 images) corresponding to eight loading steps with nearly the same force intervals are selected. These eight steps (Step 0 - 7) are identified on the force-displacement curve that is included in the dataset. The 3D images are overlaid on top of each other (registered), using 3D rigid transform by “Normalized Mutual Information”, and resampled with “Standard” (linear) interpolation, in the commercial software Avizo 2019.1. The empty space around the specimen is cropped out in each image. The eight 3D images are uploaded to this dataset in the folder "Full volumes (no filter)". Moreover, a smaller volume of interest (VOI), with a size of 330 × 580 × 630 μm3, is selected, which is shown with a blue box in the schematics available in the dataset. This volume is copped from the full volume. The eight small VOIs are also uploaded to this dataset in the folder "Cropped VOIs for analysis of damage interaction (non-local means filter)". The image noise in the small VOIs is reduced using a 3D “non-local means” filter with a search window of 10 px and local neighborhood of 3 px, using Avizo 2019.1. These 3D images are used for real-time analysis of mechanical damage in carbon fiber composites. We have performed this using digital image correlation in the reference article "Mehdikhani et al., Digital volume correlation for meso/micro in-situ damage analysis in carbon fiber reinforced composites". Other techniques can be employed to characterize the damage and the evolution of the microstructure in these images.