PNNL

Abstract

Hand calculation and verification of cladding and fuel thickness in a hot-isostatically pressed uranium-molybdenum (U-Mo) alloy can incur human errors and longer image processing time when analyzing a large set of cross-sectional images. To help alleviate both time cost and errors made in hand measurements, an automated image processing procedure was developed using Octave, an open-source MATLAB alternative, to repeatedly determine the thickness of Zr and U-Mo layers. U-Mo specimens were imaged using standard secondary electron and backscattered-electron imaging at 250× magnification to capture the various layers present in U-Mo. Further image processing used pixel-by-pixel calculation of the Zr and U-Mo layers to gather quantitative statistics on the thickness variations associated with each of the layers.