To better understand the mechanism of hydrogen assisted cracking (HAC), it is important to investigate the 3D structure of the cracks non-destructively. Since, cracks introduced by HAC are usually very small, conventional x-ray imaging methods often lack the required spatial resolution.
However, the detection of those cracks can be enhanced by taking advantage of refraction at interfaces within the sample.
To image this refractive deflection we employ analyser based imaging (ABI). In this work we aim at proving the enhanced crack detection of ABI by investigating an alluminum alloy weld.
Analyser-based imaging expands the performance of X-ray imaging by utilizing not only the absorption properties of X-rays but also the refraction and scatter rejection (extinction) properties. In this study, analyser-based computed tomography has been implemented on imaging an articular cartilage sample, depicting substructural variations, without overlay, at a pixel resolution of 3.6 µm.