A Study on Statistical Classification of Wear Debris Morphology

In this paper, statistical approach is undertaken to investigate the classification of wear debris which is the key function of objective assessment of wear debris morphology. Wear tests are run to produce various kinds of wear debris. The images of wear debris from wear tests are captured with image acquisition equipment. By thresholding, two-dimensional binary images of wear debris are made and, then, morphological parameters are used to quantify the images of debris. Parametric and nonparametric discriminant method are employed to classify wear debris into predefined wear conditions. It is demonstrated that classification accuracy of parametric and nonparametric discriminant method is similar. The selected use of morphological parameters by stepwise discriminant analysis can generally improve the classification accuracy of parametric and nonparametric discriminant method.