Morphological Granulometric Analysis of Particle Imagery from Microgravity Experiments

Abstract

The aim of our work is to analyze size distributions of particles and their agglomerates in imagery from astrophysical microgravity experiments. The data acquired in these experiments are given by sequences consisting of several hundred images. It is desirable to establish an automated routine that helps to assess size distributions of important image structures and their dynamics in a statistical way. The main technique we adopt to this end is the morphological granulometry. After preprocessing steps that facilitate granulometric analysis, we show how to extract useful information on size of particle agglomerates as well as underlying dynamics. At hand of the discussion of two different microgravity key experiments we demonstrate that the granulometric analysis enables to assess important experimental aspects. We conjecture that our developments are a useful basis for the quantitative assessment of microgravity particle experiments.