Applications of Synchrotron X-Ray Microtomography to Mesoscale Materials

We discuss the application of synchrotron X-ray microtomography (XMT) to granular matter, foams, crumpled membranes, and paper. XMT provides rapid, high-resolution, fully three-dimensional characterization of each of these classes of material. In some cases, subsequent three-dimensional image processing allows the virtual reconstruction of the disordered material as a specified assemblage of idealized basic structural units. This allows measurement of otherwise inaccessible correlation functions and can also be used as the starting point for data-initiated simulations.