3D complex shape characterization by statistical analysis: Application to aluminium alloys

The goal of this paper is to describe a methodology for characterizing 3D complex shapes using morphological features. First, we provide 3D morphological measurements for understanding complex shapes. Second, we explain the analysis method based on principal component analysis. We illustrate our approach on populations of intermetallic particles of aluminium alloys investigated using X-ray microtomography. In that case, the analysis provides a description of shapes with a limited number of parameters, with a morphological interpretation for each of them. We finally demonstrate the practical interest of our work by comparing two populations extracted from the same aluminium sample at two deformation stages of a hot rolling process.