FiVer –
The software for fiber length analysis

What is FiVer?

FiVer is a software for determining the length distribution of glass and carbon fibers based on image analysis. The fibers usually originate from ashed samples, i.e. samples from fiber-reinforced components with the polymer thermally removed.

Where do the fiber recordings come from?

We recommend using a specific high-resolution flatbed scanner as the image source. The fibers are dispersed in water and diluted to a reasonable concentration. A few milliliters of this dilution are placed in a disposable Petri dish and its contents scanned in transmitted light.

How is FiVer different?

Programs for general particle analysis can only take into account fibres that lie individually without contact to neighboring fibres. With very short fibers, this can possibly be achieved with appropriate dilution, but with longer fibers the probability of contact and intersections is high. Since long fibers contribute particularly positively to many mechanical properties, they should definitely be taken into account in the fiber length analysis.

FiVer was therefore developed to be able to handle fibers in a large length range (approx. 20 µm to 40 mm), which may also be bent and crossed several times.

How long does a fiber length analysis take?

The actual step of searching for the fibers in the image typically takes less than 5 seconds. A few more seconds are added for the initial processing and filtering of the image (noise reduction, removal of dust, etc.). In order to achieve this high speed, FiVer parallelizes many computing steps and thus makes optimum use of modern multi-core processors.