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Article
Publication date: 6 August 2019

Peng Peng and Jiugen Wang

It is a challenging task to analysis oxide wear particles when they are stuck together with other types of wear particles in complex ferrography images. Hence, this paper aims to…

Abstract

Purpose

It is a challenging task to analysis oxide wear particles when they are stuck together with other types of wear particles in complex ferrography images. Hence, this paper aims to propose a method of ferrography image segmentation to analysis oxide wear debris in complex ferrography images.

Design/methodology/approach

First, ferrography images are segmented with watershed transform. Then, two region merging rules are proposed to improve the initial segmentation results. Finally, the features of each particle are extracted to detect and assess the oxide wear particles.

Findings

The results show that the proposed method outperforms other methods of ferrography image segmentation, and the overlapping wear particles in complex ferrography images can be well separated. Moreover, the features of each separated wear particles can be easily extracted to analysis the oxide wear particles.

Practical implications

The proposed method provides a useful approach for the automatic detection and assessment of oxide wear particles in complex ferrography images.

Originality/value

The colours, edges and position information of wear debris are considered in the proposed method to improve the segmentation result. Moreover, the proposed method can not only detect oxide wear particles in ferrography images but also evaluate oxide wear severity in ferrography images.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 71 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 October 2018

Hong Liu, Haijun Wei, Haibo Xie, Lidui Wei and Jingming Li

The possibility of using a pattern recognition system for wear particle analysis without the need of a human expert holds great promise in the condition monitoring industry. Auto…

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Abstract

Purpose

The possibility of using a pattern recognition system for wear particle analysis without the need of a human expert holds great promise in the condition monitoring industry. Auto-segmentation of their images is a key to effective on-line monitoring system. Therefore, an unsupervised segmentation algorithm is required. The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach based on a local color-texture feature. An algorithm is specially designed for segmentation of wear particles’ thin section images.

Design/methodology/approach

The wear particles were generated by three kinds of tribo-tests. Pin-on-disk test and pin-on-plate test were done to generate sliding wear particles, including severe sliding ones; four-ball test was done to generate fatigue particles. Then an algorithm base on local texture property is raised, it includes two steps, first, color quantization reduces the total quantity of the colors without missing too much of the detail; second, edge image is calculated and by using a region grow technique, the image can be divided into different regions. Parameters are tested, and a criterion is designed to judge the performances.

Findings

Parameters have been tested; the scale chosen has significant influence on edge image calculation and seeds generation. Different size of windows should be applied to varies particles. Compared with traditional thresholding method along with edge detector, the proposed algorithm showed promising result. It offers a relatively higher accuracy and can be used on color image instead of gray image with little computing complexity. A conclusion can be drawn that the present method is suited for wear particles’ image segmentation and can be put into practical use in wear particles’ identification system.

Research limitations/implications

One major problem is when small particles with similar texture are attached, the algorithm will not take them as two but as one big particle. The other problem is when dealing with thin particles, mainly abrasive particles, the algorithm usually takes it as a single line instead of an area. These problems might be solved by introducing a smaller scale of 9 × 9 window or by making use of some edge enhance technique. In this way, the subtle edges between small particles or thin particles might be detected. But the effectiveness of a scale this small shall be tested. One can also magnify the original picture to double or even triple its size, but it will dramatically increase the calculating time.

Originality/value

A new unsupervised segmentation algorithm is proposed. Using the property of the edge image, we can get target out of its background, automatically. A rather complete research is done. The method is not only introduced but also completely tested. The authors examined parameters and found the best set of parameters for different kinds of wear particles. To ensure that the proposed method can work on images under different condition, three kinds of tribology tests have been carried out to simulate different wears. A criterion is designed so that the performances can be compared quantitatively which is quite valuable.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 70 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 July 2022

Xinliang Liu, Liang Cheng, Guoning Chen, Xiaolei Wang and Jingqiu Wang

The purpose of this study is to provide a new convolutional neural network (CNN) model with multi-scale feature extractor to segment and recognize wear particles in complex…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to provide a new convolutional neural network (CNN) model with multi-scale feature extractor to segment and recognize wear particles in complex ferrograph images, especially fatigue and severe sliding wear particles, which are similar in morphology while different in wear mechanism.

Design/methodology/approach

A CNN model named DWear is proposed to semantically segment fatigue, severe sliding particles and four other types of particles, that is, chain, spherical, cutting and oxide particles, which unifies segmentation and recognition together. DWear is constructed using four modules, namely, encoder, densely connected atrous spatial pyramid pooling, decoder and fully connected conditional random field. Different from the architectures of ordinary semantic segmentation CNN models, a multi-scale feature extractor using cascade connections and a coprime atrous rate group is incorporated into the DWear model to obtain multi-scale receptive fields and better extract features of wear particles. Moreover, fully connected conditional random field module is adopted for post-processing to smooth coarse prediction and obtain finer results.

Findings

DWear is trained and verified on the ferrograph image data set, and experimental results show that the final Mean Pixel Accuracy is 95.6% and the Mean Intersection over Union is 92.2%, which means that the recognition and segmentation accuracy is higher than those of previous works.

Originality/value

DWear provides a promising approach for wear particle analysis and can be further developed in equipment condition monitoring applications.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 74 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 February 2022

Puja Prakash More and Maheshwar D. Jaybhaye

The purpose of this paper is to adapt teachable machine as a web-based tool for recognition of wear pattern and type of wear by training a convolutional neural network (CNN…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to adapt teachable machine as a web-based tool for recognition of wear pattern and type of wear by training a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. This helps to monitor the health of the lubricated system as a part of condition monitoring.

Design/methodology/approach

Ferrography technique is used for analysis of wear particles. It helps monitor the condition of lubricated mechanical system. In present paper, CNN model is developed for identifying the type of wear particles coming out of Gearbox system using teachable machine.

Findings

From the experimentation, it has been observed that the wear severity index has been increased due to increase in wear particle concentration. CNN model has achieved an accuracy of 95.4% to recognize five categories of wear particles.

Originality/value

Teachable machine is generally used for the prediction of images, gestures and sound features. An attempt is made to apply this model for micro and nano wear particles to classify them based on their characteristics.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 74 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 14 September 2015

Hong Liu, Haijun Wei, Lidui Wei, Jingming Li and Zhiyuan Yang

This study aims to use a deterministic tourist walk to build a system that can identify wear particles. Wear particles provide detailed information about the wear processes taking…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to use a deterministic tourist walk to build a system that can identify wear particles. Wear particles provide detailed information about the wear processes taking place between mechanical components. Identification of the type of wear particles by image processing and pattern recognition is key to effective online monitoring algorithm. There are three kinds of particles that are particularly difficult to distinguish: severe sliding wear particles, fatigue spall particles and laminar particles.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, an identification method is tested using the deterministic tourist walking (DTW) method. This study examined whether this algorithm can be used in particle identification. If it does, can it outperform the traditional texture analysis methods such as Discrete wavelet transform or co-occurrence matrix. Different parameters such as walk’s memory size, size of image samples, different inputting vectors and different classifiers were compared.

Findings

The DTW algorithm showed promising result compared to traditional texture extraction methods: discrete wavelet transform and co-occurrence matrix. The DTW method offers a higher identification accuracy and a simple feature vector. A conclusion can be drawn that the DTW method is suited for particle identification and can be put into practical use in condition monitoring systems.

Originality/value

This paper combined DTW algorithm with wear particle identification problem.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 67 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 July 2023

Fei Xie and Haijun Wei

Using computer technology to realize ferrographic intelligent fault diagnosis technology is fundamental research to inspect the operation of mechanical equipment. This study aims…

Abstract

Purpose

Using computer technology to realize ferrographic intelligent fault diagnosis technology is fundamental research to inspect the operation of mechanical equipment. This study aims to effectively improve the technology of deep learning technology in the field of ferrographic image recognition.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes a binocular image classification model to solve ferrographic image classification problems.

Findings

This paper creatively proposes a binocular model (BesNet model). The model presents a more extreme situation. On the one hand, the model is almost unable to identify cutting wear particles. On the other hand, the model can achieve 100% accuracy in identifying Chunky and Nonferrous wear particles. The BesNet model is a bionic model of the human eye, and the used training image is a specially processed parallax image. After combining the MCECNN model, it is changed to BMECNN model, and its classification accuracy has reached the highest level in the industry.

Originality/value

The work presented in this thesis is original, except as acknowledged in the text. The material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university. The BesNet model developed in this article is a brand new system for ferrographic image recognition. The BesNet model adopts a method of imitating the eyes to view ferrography images, and its image processing method is also unique. After combining the MCECNN model, it is changed to BMECNN model, and its classification accuracy has reached the highest level in the industry.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2023-0150/

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 75 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 2005

S. Ghosh, B. Sarkar and J. Saha

The objective of the present work is to find an alternative approach for gearbox condition monitoring using wear particle characterization incorporated with image vision systems.

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Abstract

Purpose

The objective of the present work is to find an alternative approach for gearbox condition monitoring using wear particle characterization incorporated with image vision systems.

Design/methodology/approach

It is a quite well‐known phenomenon that wear generates whenever two metallic bodies have contact with each; other hence the present work tries to investigate the effect of improper lubrication in the gearbox due to wear particle generation between gear wheels. Since the identification of wear for machine condition monitoring needs much expertise knowledge and is time‐consuming using the conventional process, fractal mathematics with image morphological analysis has been utilized to overcome this situation in the present work.

Findings

The type of wear has been found for the present method by utilizing the lubricant used in the system ferrographically and a great deal of image processing has been done to characterize the type of particle so that the proper maintenance strategy can be undertaken.

Originality/value

Wear particle characterization is a quite common method in maintenance engineering, especially when fault diagnosis of any equipment is concerned. In the present work, the CCD acquisition of the images has been done for different particles, but one analysis amongst them has been shown in this paper. Among all other methodologies, the new technique of fractal mathematics has been used in the present work to minimize the imaging hazards and to make the system more user‐friendly.

Details

Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, vol. 11 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-2511

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 April 2022

Xinfa Shi, Ce Cui, Shizhong He, Xiaopeng Xie, Yuhang Sun and Chudong Qin

The purpose of this paper is to identify smaller wear particles and improve the calculation speed, identify more abrasive particles and promote industrial applications.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify smaller wear particles and improve the calculation speed, identify more abrasive particles and promote industrial applications.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper studies a new intelligent recognition method for equipment wear debris based on the YOLO V5S model released in June 2020. Nearly 800 ferrography pictures, 23 types of wear debris, about 5,000 wear debris were used to train and test the model. The new lightweight approach of wear debris recognition can be implemented in rapidly and automatically and also provide for the recognition of wear debris in the field of online wear monitoring.

Findings

An intelligent recognition method of wear debris in ferrography image based on the YOLO V5S model was designed. After the training, the GIoU values of the model converged steadily at about 0.02. The overall precision rate and recall rate reached 0.4 and 0.5, respectively. The overall MAP value of each type of wear debris was 40.5, which was close to the official recognition level of YOLO V5S in the MS COCO competition. The practicality of the model was approved. The intelligent recognition method of wear debris based on the YOLO V5S model can effectively reduce the sensitivity of wear debris size. It also has a good recognition effect on wear debris in different sizes and different scales. Compared with YOLOV. YOLOV, Mask R-CNN and other algorithms%2C, the intelligent recognition method based on the YOLO V5S model, have shown their own advantages in terms of the recognition effect of wear debris%2C the operation speed and the size of weight files. It also provides a new function for implementing accurate recognition of wear debris images collected by online and independent ferrography analysis devices.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the intelligent identification of wear debris based on the YOLO V5S network is proposed for the first time, and a large number of wear debris images are verified and applied.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 74 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 5 April 2021

Saprativ Basu, Arijit Chakrabarty, Samik Nag, Kishore Behera, Brati Bandyopadhyay, Andrew Phillip Grima and Probal Ghosh

The dryer feed chute of the pellet plant plays an important role in the pelletizing process. The chute discharges sticky and moist iron ore fines (<1 mm) to the inline rotary…

Abstract

Purpose

The dryer feed chute of the pellet plant plays an important role in the pelletizing process. The chute discharges sticky and moist iron ore fines (<1 mm) to the inline rotary dryer for further processing. Since the inception of the installation of the dryer feed chute, the poor flowability of the feed materials has caused severe problems such as blockages and excessive wear of chute liners. This leads to high maintenance costs and reduced lifetime of the liner materials. Constant housekeeping is needed for maintaining the chute and reliable operation. The purpose of this study is to redesign the dryer feed chute to overcome the above challenges.

Design/methodology/approach

The discrete element method (DEM) has been used to model the flow of cohesive materials through the transfer chute. Physical experiments have been performed to understand the most severe flow conditions. A DEM material model is also developed for replicating the worst-case material condition. After identifying the key problem areas, concept designs were proposed and simulated to assess the design improvements to increase the reliability of chute operation.

Findings

Flow simulations correlated well with the existing flow behavior of the iron ore fines inside the chute. The location of the problematic areas has been validated with that of the previously installed chute. Subsequently, design modifications have been proposed. This includes modification of deflector plate and change in slope and cross-section of the chute. DEM simulations and analysis were conducted after incorporating these design changes. A comparison in the average velocity of particle and force on chute wall shows a significant improvement using the proposed design.

Originality/value

Method to calibrate DEM material model was found to provide accurate prediction and modeling of the flow behavior of bulk material through the real transfer chute. DEM provided greater insight into the performance of the chute especially modeling cohesive materials. DEM is a valuable design tool to assist chute designers troubleshoot and verify chute designs. DEM provides a greater ability to model and assess chute wear. This technique can help in achieving a scientific understanding of the flow properties of bulk solids through transfer chute, hence eliminate challenges, ensuring reliable, uninterrupted and profitable plant operation. This paper strongly advocates the use of calibrated DEM methodology in designing bulk material handling equipment.

Details

Engineering Computations, vol. 38 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0264-4401

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 August 2019

Yanguo Yin, Rongrong Li, Guotao Zhang, Kaiyuan Zhang, Shuguang Ding and Qi Chen

This paper aims to fabricate a FeS/Cu-Bi copper-based lead-free bearing material to maintain good friction-reducing and anti-adhesive properties under boundary lubrication…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to fabricate a FeS/Cu-Bi copper-based lead-free bearing material to maintain good friction-reducing and anti-adhesive properties under boundary lubrication conditions.

Design/methodology/approach

The materials were fabricated by mechanical alloying and powder metallurgy and tested under dry friction conditions using HDM-20 wear tester.

Findings

The results show that mechanical alloying can improve the antifriction and wear resistance of the materials. The 6 per cent FeS and 6 per cent Bi in the copper-based bearing materials fabricated by mechanical alloying have a better synergism which contributes to the friction and wear properties of copper matrix.

Originality/value

This new approach solves the problems of Bi and FeS mutual segmentation, mutual agglomeration and poor interface bonding.

Details

Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, vol. 71 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0036-8792

Keywords

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