TY - JOUR
T1 - A novel method for radial hydride analysis in zirconium alloys
T2 - HAPPy
AU - Maric, Mia
AU - Thomas, Rhys
AU - Nunez-Iglesias, Juan
AU - Atkinson, Michael
AU - Bertsch, Johannes
AU - Frankel, Philipp
AU - Race, Christopher
AU - Barberis, Pierre
AU - Bourlier, Florent
AU - Preuss, Michael
AU - Shanthraj, Pratheek
N1 - Funding Information:
The Authors would like to thank Framatome for funding and providing the material for the present study. Philipp Frankel acknowledges support from MIDAS ( EPSRC EP/SO1720X ). The authors would like to thank Gerard Capes for his help in packaging the software. The authors thanks Jean-Paul Vassault and Julien Augereau for sample preparation and follow-up experiments, Mariano Marini for hydriding the samples, and Sylvain Duval for reorientation tests.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - Whilst substantial progress has been made in understanding the influence that hydrides have on the mechanical properties of zirconium alloys, there is currently an urgent need for a transparent, reproducible image analysis workflow for their characterisation. In this study, an open-source software package for the analysis of hydride networks, HAPPy (Hydride Analysis Package in Python), is introduced to calculate the radial hydride fraction (RHF) and mean hydride length, as well as characterising the connectivity of the microstructure both quantitatively and qualitatively. In this study, we used the Hough line transform to calculate the orientation distribution of the hydride segments within a micrograph, and its projection on to the radial direction is used to determine the RHF. The proposed methodology is validated, and its robustness is demonstrated over a wide range of microstructures. The image processing prior to analysis as well as the projection method used has been shown to have a significant influence on the calculated RHF, highlighting the need for standardized image analysis workflows to facilitate accurate comparisons and correlations across different studies in the literature. Finally, this paper introduces a new damage susceptibility parameter termed the branch length fraction, which can be used in conjunction with a path of lowest cost algorithm to visualise the most plausible crack path as well as the connectivity evolution over an entire micrograph.
AB - Whilst substantial progress has been made in understanding the influence that hydrides have on the mechanical properties of zirconium alloys, there is currently an urgent need for a transparent, reproducible image analysis workflow for their characterisation. In this study, an open-source software package for the analysis of hydride networks, HAPPy (Hydride Analysis Package in Python), is introduced to calculate the radial hydride fraction (RHF) and mean hydride length, as well as characterising the connectivity of the microstructure both quantitatively and qualitatively. In this study, we used the Hough line transform to calculate the orientation distribution of the hydride segments within a micrograph, and its projection on to the radial direction is used to determine the RHF. The proposed methodology is validated, and its robustness is demonstrated over a wide range of microstructures. The image processing prior to analysis as well as the projection method used has been shown to have a significant influence on the calculated RHF, highlighting the need for standardized image analysis workflows to facilitate accurate comparisons and correlations across different studies in the literature. Finally, this paper introduces a new damage susceptibility parameter termed the branch length fraction, which can be used in conjunction with a path of lowest cost algorithm to visualise the most plausible crack path as well as the connectivity evolution over an entire micrograph.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85120937238&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2021.153442
DO - 10.1016/j.jnucmat.2021.153442
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85120937238
SN - 0022-3115
VL - 559
JO - Journal of Nuclear Materials
JF - Journal of Nuclear Materials
M1 - 153442
ER -