Digital spall radiograph analysis system: Report on simulated three- dimensional digital spall image reconstruction fidelity

This report describes progress on work to develop a cost effective, rapid response system for measuring momentum and kinetic energy of spall for the Advanced Technology Assessment Center (ATAC) Armor/Anti-Armor (A{sup 3}) program at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The system will exploit data contained in two sets of simultaneous co-planar flash radiographs taken along the center line of anticipated spall motion. Data contained in each set (which is proportional to the mass and z- number of the spall material intersected by the exposing x-ray at each point) is digitized and used to construct a three dimensional model (called the reconstructed spall image) that approximates the original spall cloud. From the model the mass of spall fragments is computed. The two sets of radiographs, separated in time, represent the spall configuration at two instants of time. Spall fragments from the first instant are matched with those from the second instant to determine velocity. Evaluation of the fidelity of candidate reconstruction algorithms is the highest priority task in this development program for the obvious reason that the efficacy of the projected spall analysis system depends upon the fidelity of the reconstruction techniques. The purpose of this document is to report the results of analysis of the fidelity of best reconstruction procedure (for one radiograph set) investigated to date. The reconstruction procedure uses data from four simultaneous radiographs representing two sides and two diagonals of a cube. The procedure makes use of an available space algorithm, two probabilistic devices (a mass placement probability heuristic, and a mass clumping heuristic), and a stochastic procedure for mass that cannot be placed by the algorithm or either of the heuristics. The procedure is fully described in the body of the report