MicroLib: A library of 3D microstructures generated from 2D micrographs using SliceGAN
This provides a valuable library of 3D microstructures for finite element modeling in materials science, demonstrating broad applicability but is incremental as it extends an existing method to new data.
The authors tackled the challenge of generating 3D microstructural datasets from limited 2D images by applying SliceGAN to 87 different materials, resulting in synthetic volumes that show good agreement in microstructural properties with the training data.
3D microstructural datasets are commonly used to define the geometrical domains used in finite element modelling. This has proven a useful tool for understanding how complex material systems behave under applied stresses, temperatures and chemical conditions. However, 3D imaging of materials is challenging for a number of reasons, including limited field of view, low resolution and difficult sample preparation. Recently, a machine learning method, SliceGAN, was developed to statistically generate 3D microstructural datasets of arbitrary size using a single 2D input slice as training data. In this paper, we present the results from applying SliceGAN to 87 different microstructures, ranging from biological materials to high-strength steels. To demonstrate the accuracy of the synthetic volumes created by SliceGAN, we compare three microstructural properties between the 2D training data and 3D generations, which show good agreement. This new microstructure library both provides valuable 3D microstructures that can be used in models, and also demonstrates the broad applicability of the SliceGAN algorithm.