Measurement of surface parameters of three-dimensional braided composite preform based on curvature scale space corner detector

Abstract

Surface braiding angle and pitch length are two important parameters for characterizing and evaluating the performance of three-dimensional braided composite preforms. In this paper a new method based on an improved curvature scale space corner detector with adaptive threshold is proposed for measuring these parameters, with applications to three-dimensional, four-directional carbon-fiber braided composite preforms. First, the original image is acquired using a system employing ‘dome light source + CCD camera + circular polarizing filter’. Second, the original image is processed using Lab transform and BM3D (block-matching and 3D filter). Third, the corners are detected using an improved curvature scale space corner detector with adaptive threshold. Finally, the pitch lengths and surface braiding angles are measured from the detected corners. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve automatic measurement of the pitch length and surface braiding angle with smaller average errors relative to manual measurements compared with alternative schemes.