Optimization of image capturing method of wear particles for condition diagnosis of machine parts

Wear particles are inevitably occurred from moving parts, such as a piston-cylinder made from steel or hybrid materials. And a durability of these parts must be evaluated. The wear particle analysis has been known as a very effective method to foreknow and decide a moving situation and a damage of machine parts by using the digital computer image processing. But it is not laid down to calculate shape parameters of wear particle and wear volume. In order to apply image processing method in a durability evaluation of machine parts, it needs to verify the reliability of the calculated data by the image processing and to lay down the number of images and the amount of wear particles in one image. In this work, the lubricated friction experiment was carried out in order to establish the optimum image capture with the 1045 specimen under experiment condition. The wear particle data were calculated differently according to the number of image and the amount of wear particle in one image. The results show that capturing conditions need to be more than 140 wear particles in one image and over 40 images for the reliable data. Thus, the capturing method of wear particles images was optimized for condition diagnosis of machine moving parts.