Predicting micromechanical properties of cement paste from backscattered electron (BSE) images by computer vision

Minfei Liang, Shan He*, Yidong Gan, Hongzhi Zhang, Ze Chang, Erik Schlangen, Branko Šavija

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
51 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This paper employs computer vision techniques to predict the micromechanical properties (i.e., elastic modulus and hardness) of cement paste based on an input of Backscattered Electron (BSE) images. A dataset comprising 40,000 nanoindentation tests and 40,000 BSE micrographs was built by express nanoindentation test and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). A Residual Convolutional Neural Network (Res-Net) model, which differs from a typical Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture by a shortcut connection, was employed and compared with a simple table model. The models were trained, tuned, and tested over a training, validation and testing set comprising 70%, 15% and 15% of the 40,000 data pairs, respectively. The following conclusions were drawn: 1) Express nanoindentation tests can provide reliable information for cement paste. Deconvolution based on Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) can obtain almost invariant statistics for each phase; 2) Based on averaged greyscale values of each BSE image, a table model can predict the elastic modulus and hardness with R2 of 0.80 and 0.83, respectively; 3) Based on the intensity of each pixel as well as their patterns in each BSE image, the Res-Net model can predict the elastic modulus and hardness with a R2 of 0.85 and 0.88, respectively. Deconvolution of the Res-Net prediction obtains similar invariant statistics as derived by the nanoindentation tests, which gives strong evidence of the applicability of the Res-Net model.

Original languageEnglish
Article number111905
Number of pages14
JournalMaterials and Design
Volume229
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Keywords

  • BSE
  • Cement paste
  • Computer vision
  • Elastic modulus
  • Express nanoindentation test
  • Hardness
  • Res-Net

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Predicting micromechanical properties of cement paste from backscattered electron (BSE) images by computer vision'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this