Automatic Monitoring System for 3-D Deformation of Crustal Fault Based on Laser and Machine Vision

An automatic monitoring method of the 3-D deformation is presented for crustal fault based on laser and machine vision. The laser source and screen are independently set up in the headwall and footwall, the collimated laser beam creates a circular spot on the screen, meanwhile, the industrial camera captures the tiny deformation of the crustal fault by monitoring the change of the spot position. This method significantly reduces the cost of equipment and labor, provides daily sampling to ensure high continuity of data. A prototype of the automatic monitoring system is developed, and a repeatability test indicates that the error of spot jitter can be minimized by consecutive samples. Meanwhile, the environmental correction model is determined to ensure that environmental changes do not disturb the system. Furthermore, the automatic monitoring system has been applied at the deformation monitoring station(KJX02) of China Beishan underground research laboratory, where continuous deformation monitoring is underway.

Visual sensing and morphological image processing of weld pool in laser spot welding

A visual sensing system was established to monitor the weld pool in laser spot welding. The top-hat and bottom-hat transformation algorithms based on mathematical morphology were used to compensate for non-uniform contrast of weld pool edge. Moreover, the canny edge detector was applied to extract the weld paol profile. The edge detected results show that the morphological operation is obviously superior to the traditional contrast enhancement method. In addition, the combination of dilation and erosion was applied to eliminate the irrelevant edge details, and the smooth weld pool edge was acquired. Based on the image processing technology described above, the dynamic process of weld pool diameter during laser spot welding was obtained.

First demonstration of improving laser propagation inside the spherical hohlraums by using the cylindrical laser entrance hole

The octahedral spherical hohlraums have natural superiority in maintaining high radiation symmetry during the entire capsule implosion process in indirect drive inertial confinement fusion.While,in contrast to the cylindrical hohlraums,the narrow space between the laser beams and the spherical hohlraum wall is usually commented.In this Letter,we address this crucial issue and report our experimental work conducted on the SGIII-prototype laser facility which unambiguously demonstrates that a simple design of cylindrical laser entrance hole(LEH)can dramatically improve the laser propagation inside the spherical hohlraums.In addition,the laser beam deflection in the hohlraum is observed for the first time in the experiments.Our 2-dimensional simulation results also verify qualitatively the advantages of the spherical hohlraums with cylindrical LEHs.Our results imply the prospect of adopting the cylindrical LEHs in future spherical ignition hohlraum design.

Surface crack imaging based on delayed temperature difference at symmetric points by laser spot thermography

Laser spot thermography is a novel technique for the detection of surface cracks with a laser to heat sample locally and with an IR camera to record the surface temperature distribution. Common methods to characterize cracks are only suitable for the situation that the laser scanning path is vertical to the crack. But due to the randomness of cracks,when the scanning path is parallel to the crack,surface cracks cannot be detected by these methods. To tackle this problem,a method is presented which is suitable for the situation that the scanning path is parallel to crack. The main idea is to evaluate the crack-caused asymmetries of the surface temperature distribution. The effect of temperature gradient and the maximum scanning interval are analyzed by a 2D simulation. A new crack imaging technique is presented that is based on delayed temperature difference at symmetric points to characterize the crack in the thermal image. Compared well with those obtained by the spatial first derivative method,experimental results are shown to efficiently prove this method.

LASER WELDING OF BEARING PROTECTIVE WASHERS

Spot laser welding was applied for fastening of protective bearing washers.Corresponding technology and laser welding plants are described. Correlation between appearance of the spot welds and their quality was discovered. Mechanism of the welding distortion has been revealed.

Welding of shape memory alloy to stainless steel for medical occluder

Dissimilar metal joining between NiTi shape memory alloy（SMA） and stainless steel was conducted.A cluster of NiTi SMA wires were first joined with tungsten inert gas（TIG） welding process,then the NiTi SMA TIG weld was welded to a stainless steel pipe with laser spot welding process.The microstructure of the welds was examined with an optical microscope and the elemental distribution in the welds was measured by electron probe microanalysis（EPMA）.The results show that TiC compounds dispersively distribute in the NiTi SMA TIG weld.However,the amount of TiC compounds greatly decreases around the fusion boundary of the laser spot weld between the NiTi SMA and stainless steel.Mutual diffusion between NiTi shape memory alloy and stainless steel happen within a short distance near the fusion boundary,and intermetallic compounds such as Ni3Ti＋（Fe,Ni）Ti appear around the fusion boundary.

Laser spot associated high-saturation phosphor-in-glass film for transmissive and reflective high-brightness laser lighting

Phosphor-in-glass(PiG)film is a promising luminescent material in high-brightness laser lighting for its advantages of high efficiency,outstanding color quality,and low-cost preparation,which must bear high laser power(LP)and laser power density(LPD)simultaneously to enable high-luminance light.Herein,laser spot associated high-saturation PiG film was proposed for transmissive and reflective high-brightness laser lighting.Two types of PiG films were prepared by printing and sintering La_(3)Si_(6)N_(11):Ce^(3+)(LSN)phosphor-borosilicate glass pastes on a sapphire substrate(PiG-S)and an AlN substrate(PiG-A),respectively.The PiG films with perfect crystal structure of phosphor were reliably bonded on the substrates.The effects of laser spot areas on the luminescence saturation of LP and LPD were investigated in the PiG films.With the increase of laser spot area from 0.5 to 2.5 mm^(2),the LP threshold of PiG films is gradually raised,while the LPD threshold of PiG films is decreased.The PiG-S withstands a high LP of 23.46 W and a high LPD of 20.64 W/mm^(2),enabling white light with a luminous flux of 3677 lm.The PiG-A withstands a high LP of 41.12 W and a high LPD of 35.56 W/mm^(2),enabling white light with a luminous flux of 2882 lm.Moreover,the PiG-A maintains lower working temperature compared with the PiG-S,and the temperatures reduce with the increasing laser spot area.The results demonstrate that the laser spot associated PiG films realize high saturation thresholds of LP and LPD simultaneously,and enable high luminance for laser lighting.

Investigation of Surface Integrity on TC17 Titanium Alloy Treated by Square-spot Laser Shock Peening

Laser shock peening（LSP） is an innovative surface treatment method,which has been shown to greatly improve the fatigue life of many metallic components.This work investigates surface integrity of TC17 titanium alloy treated by LSP with innovative square laser spot.Nd：glass laser with duration of 30 ns and spot size of 4 mm×4 mm is applied.The surface morphology and surface residual stress of the TC17 titanium alloy,treated with varying peening parameters such as laser power density and overlapping ratio,have been studied in detail.The results show that laser pulse energy greatly influences surface morphology and surface residual stress around single-spot treated areas,and compressive residual stresses are saturated as laser pulse energy is over 55 J.There are significantly different surface morphologies and residual stress distributions at the overlapped areas with different overlapping ratios.A relative smooth surface is produced with uniform compressive residual stress distribution at an overlapping ratio of 8 %.The experiment of residual stress relaxation is implemented by measuring residual stress at the center of four overlapped spots and by four point bending fatigue test at the frequency of 105 Hz.The compressive residual stresses induced by LSP are found to relax quite slowly under cyclic fatigue loading.

Experimental Analysis of Microscale Laser Shock Processing on Metallic Material Using Excimer Laser

Microscale laser shock processing （μLSP）, also known as laser shock processing in microscale, is a technique that uses microscale focused laser beam to induce high pressure plasma and generates plastic deformation and compressive residual stress in target materials, thus improves fatigue or stress corrosion cracking resistance of MEMS （Micro Electromechanical Systems） devices made of such a material. Many works have been reported about the research and experiment for μLSP. But the diameters of 50-200 μm were used at the first time for this field, which was useful for treating micro-device components with larger area and curved surface. The excimer laser was used firstly on μLSP for shorter wavelength than that of used in previous researches. The determination method of laser spot size at micro-level spatial resolution was presented. Under these conditions, plastic deformation, the stress analysis and microhardness with different pulse number, pulse energy and pulse spacing were investigated. Especially the residual stress distribution with depth treated by #LSP, was first investigated. Experiment results showed that the material performance was improved remarkably after μLSP.

Small laser spot versus standard laser spot photodynamic therapy for idiopathic choroidal neovascularization： a randomized controlled study

Background Idiopathic choroidal neovascularization （ICNV） affects young patients and thus may have a significant impact on vision and life quality over a patient＇s lifespan. This study was designed to compare the visual outcome and retinal pigment epithelium （RPE） damage after photodynamic therapy （PDT） with small laser spot and PDT with standard laser spot for idiopathic choroidal neovascularization （ICNV）. Methods This was a randomized controlled study. Fifty-two patients with ICNV were enrolled and randomly divided into a study group （small laser spot PDT, n=27） and a control group （standard laser spot PDT, n=25）. Best corrected visual acuity （BCVA）, optic coherence tomography （OCT） and fluorescein angiography （FA） findings were the main measurements. The patients were followed up 1 week, 1, 3, 6, 9 months and 1 year after PDT. Results BCVA improvement was statistically significantly higher in the study group than the control group at 6-month （（25.53±15.01） letters vs. （14.71±11.66） letters, P=-0.025） and 9-month follow-ups （（27.53±17.78） letters vs. （15.59±12.21） letters, P=0.039）. At 3- and 6-month follow-ups, the quadrants of RPE damage between the two groups varied significantly （P 〈0.001 and P=0.023, respectively）. In each follow-up, the number of cases with decreased or unchanged leakage of choroidal neovascularization by FA and reduced subretinal fluid by OCT did not vary significantly between the two groups. Ten cases （37.0%） in the study group and eight cases （32.0%） in the control group suffered from recurrent CNV （P=-0.703）. Conclusions Better visual improvements, less RPE damage, a similar recurrent rate of CNV and change of subretinal fluid were observed in the small laser spot PDT group than in the standard laser spot PDT group for ICNV.

Tracking and Guiding Multiple Laser Beams for Beam and Target Alignment

An accurate and robust approach for tracking and guiding multiple laser beams is developed, which can be applied to the task of beam and target alignment. Multiple laser spots are firstly detected and recognized from the image sequences of the target and laser spots. Then, the contour tracking algorithm based on the chain code is investigated, in which the shape matching scheme based on the invariant moments is employed to distinguish different spots. When occlusion occurs in the multiple spots tracking procedure,the contour tracking combined with Kalman filter prediction is proposed to obtain the positions of multiple spots in real-time. In order to guide 3 spots to align the target, an incremental proportional integral(PI) controller is employed to make the image features of spots converge to the desired ones. Comparative experiments show that, the proposed tracking method can successfully cope with the fast motion, partial or complete occlusion. The experiment results on spots guiding also exhibit the accurate and robust performance of the strategy. The proposed visual system solves the problem of spots mixing, reduces the alignment time, improves the shooting accuracy and has been successfully applied to the experimental platform.