Quantitative characterization of carbon/carbon composites matrix texture based on image analysis using polarized light microscope

A quantitative characteristic method was proposed for characterizing the matrix texture of carbon/carbon(C/C) composites, which determined the mechanical and physical properties of C/C composites. Based on the cloud theory that was commonly used for uncertain reasoning and the transformation between quantitative and qualitative characterization, so the relationship between the extinction angle and texture types was built by the cloud models for describing the texture of microstructure, moreover, linguistic controllers were established to analyze the matrix texture in accordance with the features of the polarized light microscope (PLM) image. On this basis, the extinction angle could be calculated from the PLM image of the C/C composites. In contrast to the results of measurement, the errors between calculative values and measured values were maintained 1-2° in basically. Meanwhile, the PLM image of C/C composites was segmented by the component, in particular, the matrix with mixed textures was further segmented by the difference of texture. It means that the quantitative characterization of C/C composites matrix based on single PLM image has been realized.