Image Characterization to Quantify the Surface Roughness of the Damaged High Performance Polymer Fibers

Graduate #73
Discipline: Mathematics and Statistics
Subcategory: Materials Science

Pavan Akunuri - Virginia State University

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This study describes the development of a method to quantify the surface roughness of the fibers and correlate it with the reduction in tensile strength in ropes. Ingression of particulate materials in synthetic ropes is a concern due to the damage they conflict to the constituent fibers resulting in the reduction of the tensile strength in these ropes. During normal operations a rope is cycled through various tensions as loads are added or removed. The Cycling of tension results in the displacement of fibers between themselves and with any particulate matter which may be present. The subsequent movement of the particles against the surface of the fibers abrades the fibers which reduces their cross sectional area and will eventually severe some of them resulting in a loss of the ropes tension strength. The abraded surface can be characterized in terms of roughness, which is characterizes as a high frequency component on a surface. Braided ropes samples infused with fine particles were cycled through varying loads using an Instron. The breaking strengths of abraded ropes were then measured using the Instron. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) was used to examine the damage on the surface of the fibers. The Characterization of regions in the micrographs is defined by texture. Computation of these characteristics were described by extracting the features from these images. Using the image analysis capability in MATLAB, feature extraction is implemented and these projections were used in a discriminative classifier, Support Vector Machine (SVM) to train a model. This model is used to predict the class labels. The correlation between the roughness as measured using this technique and the tension test results showed the benefit and potential of using this technique for studying abrasion in synthetic ropes.

Funder Acknowledgement(s): This study was funded by Honeywell Specialty Products Division Colonial Heights VA 23834.

Faculty Advisor: Krishan Agrawal, kagrawal@vsu.edu

Role: Collecting the rope samples and performing the experiments to artificially damage the rope. Creating the micro graphs from Scanning electron Microscope. Once the micro graphs are collected, using the MATLAB, developed the technique to quantify the roughness and compared the level of the damage from the data with the ground truth values.