Quantification of the Morphology and Roughness of Oxide Powder Particles In Relation to their Manufacturing History and Flow Properties

In this work, we propose to establish a quantitative link between the morphology and roughness of oxide powder particles and their flow properties. To this end, model uranium dioxide powders have been fabricated to obtain a controlled particle size distribution and shape. A method has been developed to characterize particle morphology. This method is based on ImageJ's Shape Filter module and analyzes the images resulting from the 2 D projection of each aggregate. The morphological parameters used to characterize the powder are elongation, circularity and solidity. These images can be obtained by different ways: a morpho-granulometer (using dry or liquid dispersion), a digital-optical microscope (using dry dispersion) or a scanning electron microscope (using resin-coated particles). Rheological properties are obtained using an FT4 powder rheometer: the powder undergoes different tests (permeability, compressibility, shear, etc.) to quantify its flowability. Finally, two optical methods are used to characterize roughness. The first one is based on the use of a gray-level co-occurrence matrix analyzing images of the particles making up the powder. The second method, derived from existing work, is based on a fractal analysis of the particle contour. Finally, we establish a link between these different properties