Wear particle texture classification using artificial neural networks

Analysis of wear debris carried by a lubricant in an oil-wetted system provides important information about the condition of a machine. This paper describes the analysis of microscopic metal particles generated by wear using computer vision and image processing. The aim is to classify these particles according to their morphology and surface texture and by using the information obtained, to predict wear failure modes in engines and other machinery. This approach obviates the need for specialists and reliance on human visual inspection techniques. The procedure reported in this paper, is used to classify surface features of the wear particles by using artificial neural networks. A visual comparison between cooccurrence matrices representing five different texture classes is described. Based on these comparisons, matrices of reduced sizes are utilized to train a feed-forward neural classifier in order to distinguish between the various texture classes.