A high resolution method for characterisation of fibre misalignment angles in composites

In this paper a novel method to characterise fibre waviness in composites is presented and assessed. The proposed method referred to as the high resolution misalignment analysis (HRMA) method and is suitable for measurements with high spatial resolution. The HRMA method measures misalignment angles tracing individual fibres in detailed micrographs. Here, the method is evaluated using software-generated images with known statistics to mimic real micrographs. Results reveal that the HRMA method provides very accurate measurements on composites with high fibre waviness, outperforming existing methods, whereas it performs on par with existing methods for materials featuring medium fibre waviness. The HRMA method is capable of characterising a 2 cm(2) micrograph with a spatial resolution of 55 pm in approximately 1 min on a standard laptop computer. The HRMA code and software-generated images are supplied as supplementary material to this paper.