Elastomer Blend Phase Morphology Image Processing Scanning Electron Microscopy Texture

image processing technique has been developed to quantitatively analyze elas-tomer blend morphology. In this case, the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images of surfaces obtained at various intervals of mixing of binary blends of polyisoprene (IR) and ethylene propylene monomer (EPM) elastomers in a labora-tory internal mixer were represented in terms of closed set of orthogonal polyno-mials. The significant orthogonal effects were measured and combined to repre-sent the local texture i.e., pronum and global descriptor, prospectrum which is the frequency of occurrence of pronum. Various statistical parameters were cal-culated from prospectrum and correlated with blend morphology. Time of attain-ment of final phase morphology beyond a period of mixing for 5 min. was ascer-tained from this imaging technique. Further, the blends were also annealed for different periods of time up to 20 h. and the SEM pictures, were examined by this method. Bilddatenverarbeitung der Morpho-logie von Elastomermischunge