An integrated intelligence system for wear debris analysis

Wear debris generated from two moving surfaces inside a machine is a direct wear product of operating machinery. The study of the debris can reveal wear mechanisms, wear modes and wear phases undergoing in the machine. Hence, wear debris analysis can be a very useful means to assess the condition of the machine. However, the current techniques for individual particle analysis are usually time-consuming and costly due to the requirement of analyst’s expertise to perform particle inspection, morphology characterisation and data interpretation. The limitation has obstructed the wide application of this method. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective, reliable and cost-efficient techniques to perform wear debris analysis for industrial application. This paper presents a fully computerised package for wear debris analysis. The package includes three major systems corresponding to a three-dimensional particle analysis system, an automatic particle identification system and an expert system, communicating with each other through user-friendly interfaces. The successful development of such a system has demonstrated the possibility to achieve a fully computerised analysis system for routine and in-depth wear debris study for machine condition monitoring and fault diagnosis.