Laser Line Scan Research Articles

Confocal laser speckle autocorrelation imaging of dynamic flow in microvasculature

Laser speckle imaging has been widely used for in-vivo visualization of blood perfusion in biological tissues. However, existing laser speckle imaging techniques suffer from limited quantification accuracy and spatial resolution. Here we report a novel design and implementation of a powerful laser speckle imaging platform to solve the two critical limitations. The core technique of our platform is a combination of line scan confocal microscopy with laser speckle autocorrelation imaging, which is termed Line Scan Laser Speckle Autocorrelation Imaging (LS-LSAI). The technical advantages of LS-LSAI include high spatial resolution (~4.4 μm) for visualizing and quantifying blood flow in microvessels, as well as video-rate imaging speed for tracing dynamic flow.

Rutting Trajectory Measurement of Curved Ramps Using 3d Line Scanning Laser System and Binocular Stereo Vision System

Rutting Trajectory Measurement of Curved Ramps Using 3d Line Scanning Laser System and Binocular Stereo Vision System

A Vehicle-Based Laser System for High-Resolution DEM Development – Performance Evaluation of System Components.

Surface microtopography is quantified by the deviations in the direction of the normal vector of the surface. Soil microtopography is a major factor influencing soil erosion by water and wind. Surface microtopography can be accurately described using the Digital Elevation Model (DEM). In this study, a vehicle-based laser system was developed to generate high-resolution DEM data. The system consisted of five major components: a laser line scanner, a gyroscope sensor, a real-time kinematic GPS, a frame-rail mechanism, and a data acquisition and control unit. A series of experiments were conducted in the laboratory to evaluate the performance of the components. The result of distance measurements indicated that the system gave the most consistent distance measurement on a white paper. Static gyroscope sensor accuracy tests showed that angle measurement errors observed in combined pitch/roll rotations were larger than in single rotations. Within ±30º of single rotations, the measurement errors for pitch and roll angles were within 0.8º and 0.4º, respectively. The tests of the angular displacement on the linear rail showed that it slightly tilted towards the laser line scanner when it moved along the rail.

Powder Surface Roughness as Proxy for Bed Density in Powder Bed Fusion of Polymers.

Powder bed fusion of polymers is becoming increasingly adopted by a variety of industries to tailor the strength, weight and functionality of end-use products. To meet the high standards of the modern manufacturing industry, parts built with powder bed fusion require consistent properties and to be free of defects, which is intrinsically connected to the quality of the powder bed prior to melting. The hypothesis of this work is that the roughness of the top surface of an unmelted powder bed can serve as a proxy for the powder bed density, which is known to correlate with final part density. In this study, a laser line scan profilometer is integrated onto the recoater arm of a custom powder test bench, which is able to automatically create layers of powder. A diverse group of polymers was investigated including polyamide 12 (PA12), polyamide 11 (PA11), polypropylene (PP), and a thermoplastic elastomer (TPU) under different recoating speed in order to increase the variance of the dataset. Data analytics were employed to compare roughness to measured powder bed density and a statically significant correlation was established between them.

Robust and accurate sub-pixel extraction method of laser stripes in complex circumstances.

Line laser scanning measurement is a major area of interest within the field of 3D laser scanning measurement. Traditionally, sub-pixel extraction of laser stripes is a dominant point for line laser scanning measurement. In particular, the noise separation of laser stripe images and the accuracy of feature extraction of the laser stripe are the main challenges for sub-pixel extraction of laser stripes in complex circumstances. To this end, this study utilizes a robust and accurate method with two steps to extract sub-pixel features of laser stripes for 3D laser scanning measurement. Laser stripe segmentation based on a deep semantic segmentation network is initially implemented for noise elimination of images. Then, the sub-pixel extraction of the gray peak points of laser stripes is accomplished by Shepard sub-pixel interpolation and gray surface fitting, which can adequately utilize the gray distribution of laser stripes and obtain high-precision and anti-interference results. The robustness, effectiveness, and accuracy are verified by comparative experiments with classical methods. The results indicate that the proposed method can obtain much more complete, denser, and smoother results than traditional methods, especially in challenging measurement conditions, such as a large curved surface, a highly reflective surface, or intense ambient light. The accuracy of the proposed method can meet the requirements of high-precision measurement.

Optical Material Characterisation of Prepreg CFRP for Improved Composite Inspection

Automated fibre layup techniques are often applied for the production of complex structural components. In order to ensure a sufficient component quality, a subsequent visual inspection is necessary, especially in the aerospace industry. The use of automated optical inspection systems can reduce the inspection effort by up to 50 %. Laser line scan sensors, which capture the topology of the surface, are particularly advantageous for this purpose. These sensors project a laser beam at an angle onto the surface and detect its position via a camera. The optical properties of the observed surface potentially have a great influence on the quality of the recorded data. This is especially relevant for dark or highly scattering materials such as Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRP). For this reason, in this study we investigate the optical reflection and transmission properties of the commonly used Hexel HexPly 8552 IM7 prepreg CFRP in detail. Therefore, we utilise a Gonioreflectometer to investigate such optical characteristics of the material with respect to different fibre orientations, illumination directions and detection angles. In this way, specific scattering information of the material in the hemispherical space are recorded. The major novelty of this research are the findings about the scattering behaviour of the fibre composite material which can be used as a more precise input for the methods of image data quality assessment from our previous research and thus is particularly valuable for developers and users of camera based inspection systems for CFRP components.

Optimization of the processing parameters in laser sharpening of bronze-bonded diamond grinding wheels

In this paper a new contribution to the optimization of processing parameters in the process of laser sharpening grinding wheels is presented. In the establishment of the three-dimensional heat conduction model, the laser heat source model is improved and the temperature field of the pulsed laser ablation material is obtained. The effects of laser power, laser line spot overlap ratio and laser scanning track overlap ratio on the sharpening efficiency and accuracy have been studied through the established numerical model. Like what happened in the actual machining process, the morphology of the bond material surface after laser sharpening was obtained by the simulation. The results show that the optimal values of laser power, laser line spot overlap ratio and laser scanning track overlap ratio are 20 W, 70%, and 70%, respectively. The simulation results have been verified and compared with the experimental results, revealing a good correlation between the simulation and experimental data. In a word, the numerical model established in this paper can be conveniently used in the optimization of the process parameters in the laser sharpening grinding wheel.

Surface micro-texture on sapphire fabricated by laser ablation trajectory regulation

Fabrication of the surface micro-texture on the C-plane sapphire is undertaken by a 355 nm Ultraviolet (UV) pulsed laser. The surface micro-textures of sapphire with different laser scanning line spacing ranging from 10 μm to 100 μm are obtained, where the selection range of scanning line spacing is controlled in the range of the groove width and plasma width to obtain a surface of high Peak-Valley (PV) value. A reasonable processing order is proposed to manufacture different types of surface micro-textures on sapphire by laser ablation trajectory regulation. In the multiple-passes laser ablation of sapphire by the UV nanosecond pulsed laser, the scanning lines in each direction is treated as once scanning. On this basis, the multiple processing can be carried out to avoid the influence of the subsequent scanning on the machined groove. In addition, the effect of different scanning line spacing on the PV value is quantified and different types of surface micro-textures on sapphire, including the squares, the rhombuses and the hexagons, are successfully fabricated, which can be applied in the friction reduction or anti-reflection field.

CAD-BASED PATH PLANNING FOR LINE LASER SCANNING OF CURVED SURFACE

On-machine measurement by a line laser scanner has a great potential in machining large complex components in aerospace and automation applications. This paper proposes a novel approach for path planning of measuring curved surfaces in a 5-axis machine tool, which takes scanning overlap, visual angle, and working distance into consideration. A conformal mapping algorithm is employed to transform a three-dimensional (3D) mesh surface to a 2D parametric plane. The shortest equidistant paths calculated in the 2D plane are transformed into smooth collision-free scanning paths in the 3D surface. The experiments verify that this method can improve the efficiency by 21.4% and the accuracy by 24.9%.

Online melt pool depth estimation during directed energy deposition using coaxial infrared camera, laser line scanner, and artificial neural network

Melt pool monitoring techniques aid in the quality assurance and control of directed energy deposition (DED) additive manufacturing. Typically, the monitoring is based on the characterization of melt pool geometries, such as width, height, and depth. Among these, the melt pool depth cannot be measured directly. However, it indicates the distance from the deposited surface to the deepest point of the melt pool and is a key factor that determines the metallurgical bond between layers. In this study, an online melt pool depth estimation technique was developed for the DED process using a coaxial infrared (IR) camera, a laser line scanner, and an artificial neural network (ANN). Initially, the width and length of the melt pool at a particular position were measured using the coaxial IR camera. Simultaneously, the laser line scanner measured the build height and deposited track profile of the same position online. Features extracted from these measurements were used as inputs to the ANN model, and the melt pool depth was estimated online during multi-layer and multi-track printing. The performance of the proposed technique was verified considering multiple values of laser power, scanning speed, build height, and hatch spacing. The estimation results were compared with those obtained from optical microscopy inspection. The overall accuracy of the melt pool depth estimation was approximately 25.97 µm. These results demonstrate the effectiveness and potential of the proposed online melt pool depth estimation technique for DED process monitoring. • Novel technique of online melt pool depth estimation is proposed for DED in AM. • Coaxial IR camera and laser line scanner are used to obtain the measurements. • Features extracted from the measurements serve as inputs to the developed ANN. • Experimental results are compared with those obtained from optical microscopy. • Proposed method’s accuracy is verified and feature ablation studies are performed.

Lining Wear Measurements using a Coordinate Measurement Machine

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Accurate measurements of brake friction materials are critical to understanding brake behaviors during testing. Current methods typically utilize a hand gauge (or a machine, in some cases) to sample various discrete points on the brake lining. This approach limits measurements to planar wear characteristics, taper and thickness, and excludes more complex measurements such as cupping. The limited number of points means that a single errant point measurement or the choice of point locations can have a large impact on the reported wear measurement.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">This paper will describe a method for utilizing a Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM) fitted with a laser line scanning tool to generate a point cloud of data that can then be compared to an earlier measurement of the same piece or to a math model. This method produces thousands of data points which allows for more accurate volumetric wear calculations and color maps of the entire friction face. A gage R&R for this method is presented along with some of the challenges involved in fixturing and aligning brakes pads for analysis.</div></div>

Study of the Effect of Two Separate Tilt Angles of Laser Scanning Lines on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties in Direct Metal Laser Sintered AlSi10Mg Alloy

Study of the Effect of Two Separate Tilt Angles of Laser Scanning Lines on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties in Direct Metal Laser Sintered AlSi10Mg Alloy

Digital Twin of an Optical Measurement System.

Digital twins of measurement systems are used to estimate their measurement uncertainty. In the past, virtual coordinate measuring machines have been extensively researched. Research on digital twins of optical systems is still lacking due to the high number of error contributors. A method to describe a digital twin of an optical measurement system is presented in this article. The discussed optical system is a laser line scanner mounted on a coordinate measuring machine. Each component of the measurement system is mathematically described. The coordinate measuring machine focuses on the hardware errors and the laser line scanner determines the measurement error based on the scan depth, in-plane angle and out-of-plane angle. The digital twin assumes stable measurement conditions and uniform surface characteristics. Based on the Monte Carlo principle, virtual measurements can be used to determine the measurement uncertainty. This is demonstrated by validating the digital twin on a set of calibrated ring gauges. Two validation tests are performed: the first verifies the virtual uncertainty estimation by comparison with experimental data. The second validates the measured diameter of different ring gauges by comparing the estimated confidence interval with the calibrated diameter.

Laser fuze specific target recognition based on grey system theory

Existing target recognition methods are difficult to implement on a low-cost and small-volume fuze platform. This paper proposes a rapid typical target recognition algorithm tailored to small sample sizes. A laser line scanning model is used to complete the target two-dimensional (2D) scanning, and the distance value of the target to be recognized is obtained to form a sample sequence matrix of the recognition algorithm. The ground recognition algorithm, which properly incorporates the ground effect and the uncertain direction of motion of the recognized target is used to reduce the influence of ground effect, a coordinated conversion model of the recognized target is established; a typical target recognition model based on grey system theory and fuzzy mathematics theory is established accordingly. The algorithm resolves the uncertainty in target recognition under lean information conditions. The recognition algorithm is proven capable of recognizing specific targets under small sample size. The results presented here may provide a reference for future low-cost laser imaging fuze target recognition applications.

Online geometry monitoring during directed energy deposition additive manufacturing using laser line scanning

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a powerful and promising manufacturing technology. Advances in AM have led to increasing demands for its applications; however, controlling the geometry of deposited objects during the AM process remains a major challenge. Geometry control and compliance to a target geometry are some of the key concerns for AM, especially for a prototype requiring high precision in its geometry. In this study, an online geometry estimation methodology for continuous monitoring during the directed energy deposition (DED) process was developed using a laser line scanner. Our proposed methodology comprises (1) real-time scanning of each deposited track's profile, (2) online extraction of the track's geometry, and (3) online plotting and comparison of the as-designed and as-built models. In the methodology, data analysis following real-time scanning, such as geometry discrepancy estimation and online plotting of the as-built model, is attained for both single- and multi-layer objects. The effectiveness of our developed methodology is examined by comparing the profiles of the single- and multi-layer objects estimated during the DED process with the reference profiles obtained via laser line scanning and microscopy after the completion of the DED process.

Ensemble Mode and Singular Value Based Road Texture-Skid Study

Traffic accidents occur frequently every year. Skid-resistance performance is an important indicator in evaluating road safety. In this paper, the road surface texture information is obtained by a line laser scanner. The original two-dimensional (2D) signal is decomposed into eight intrinsic mode functions by complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD). Eight intrinsic mode functions compose an 800 × 8 data matrix. The matrix is decomposed by singular value decomposition (SVD), and singular value vectors are obtained. The singular values are summed and linearly fitted to the friction value measured by the British pendulum friction meter. The study finds that the singular value sum of one to five has a good linear correlation with the friction value with the goodness of fit greater than 0.8. At the same time, contour arithmetic mean deviation Ra is applied for verification. The results show that the singular value sum has a strong correlation with Ra. When the number of Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) decomposition is greater than eight, there is a good correlation between the number of IMF and the friction value from IMF2 to IMF6. When the number of IMF decomposition is less than eight, the singular value sum numbers with R2 more than 0.8 gradually decrease. It is suggested that the road surface friction performance can be estimated by solving the singular value of the 2D signal. It provides new technical support for the detection and evaluation of anti-skid performance.

하모닉 감속기의 치형 오차 측정 및 평가

Due to the recent 4<SUP>th</SUP> industrial revolution and explosive interest in smart factories, the demand for industrial robots and related technologies is rapidly increasing. In order to develop a precision reducer for robots, a measurement technology of the small teeth of a gear is very important. This paper developed a method to measure the tooth shape of a precision harmonic reducer for robots and to evaluate the tooth shape measurement error quantitatively. The tooth shape of the flexspline of a harmonic drive was measured using three instrumental devices: a stylus, a projector, and a laser line scanner. A mathematical tool was also developed to evaluate the error by comparing the designed and measured teeth. The measured tooth profile was quantitatively assessed with maximum, average, and root mean square error. The measurement method using a stylus has disadvantages of careful measurement effort and a small measuring range. However, it has better precision. On the other hand, the projection method shows a moderate performance without much effort during measurement.

Influence of energy density on polyamide 12 processed by SLS: from physical and mechanical properties to microstructural and crystallization evolution

Purpose This paper aims to provide a detailed study on influence of the laser energy density on mechanical, surface and dimensional properties of polyamide 12 (PA12) parts produced by selective laser sintering (SLS), providing the microstructural and crystallization evolution of the samples produced at different energy densities. Design/methodology/approach Making use of a space filling design of experiments, a wide range of laser sintering parameters is covered. Surface morphology is assessed by means of profile measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. Mechanical testing, SEM, X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were used to assess the influence of energy density on structural and mechanical properties. Findings Results show a high dependency of the properties on the laser energy density and also a compromise existing between laser exposure parameters and desired properties of laser sintered parts. Surface roughness could be associated to overlap degree when using higher scan line spacing values and lower laser speeds improved surface roughness when high scan line spacing is used. Higher mechanical properties were found at higher energy density levels, but excessively high energy density decreased mechanical properties. A transition from brittle to ductile fracture with increasing energy density could be clearly observed by mechanical analysis and SEM. XRD and DSC measurements show a decrease on the crystal fraction with increasing energy densities, which corroborated the plastic behavior observed, and FTIR measurements revealed polymer degradation through chain scission might occur at too high energy densities. Originality/value Valuable guidelines are given regarding energy density optimization for SLS of PA12 considering not only quality criteria but also microstructure characteristics. Surface properties are studied based on the concept of degree of overlap between laser scanning lines. For the first time, crystallization behavior of SLS PA12 parts produced at different energy levels was studied by means of XRD measurements. Polymer degradation of SLS PA12 parts was evaluated with FTIR, which is a non-destructive and easy test to be conducted.

A dissection and enhancement technique for combined damage characterisation in composite laminates using laser-line scanning thermography

Impact induced combined damage in composite laminates attracts great attention due to its significant degradation of the structural integrity. However, the provision of the quantitative analysis of each damage portion is challenging due to its bare visibility and structural mixture complexity, so-called barely visible impact damage (BVID), which is referred to as inter-laminar delamination, and is inherently coupled with in-plane transverse and matrix damage also known as combined damage. Instead of focusing on one type of damage in most of the existing studies, this paper proposes a decomposition and targeted enhancement technique based on Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) for such coupled BVID in composite laminates using laser-line scanning thermography. Firstly, a combined damage model composed of in-plane damage and inter-laminar delamination is established by finite element numerical modelling to predict the thermal response pattern in the laser scanning thermography. Then, a feature separation and targeted enhancement strategy based on SWT in the frequency domain is proposed to improve the contrast of the matrix crack and delamination in combined damage scenarios induced by low-velocity rigid impact via drop-tower tests, meanwhile eliminating noise and suppressing the laser pattern background. The enhanced images of in-plane damage and delamination are furtherly processed by Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) method and confidence map algorithms to calibrate the damage profile. The proposed technique is validated through inspecting a group of unidirectional carbon fibre-reinforced polymer composite samples, impacted by a variety of energy levels, in fibre-parallel (0°), 45° and orthogonal scanning modes. The results demonstrate that the proposed technique can pertinently isolate, enhance and characterise the inspected in-plane crack and inter-laminates delamination in a flexible manner. The proposed methodology paves the way towards automated infrared thermography data analysis for quantitative dissection of actual combined damage in composite laminates.

The Influence of Slipface Angle on Fluvial Dune Growth

AbstractDunes dominate the bed of sandy rivers and they respond to flow by changing shape and size, modifying flow, and sediment transport dynamics of rivers. Our understanding of and ability to predict dune adaptation, particularly dune growth and decay, remain incomplete. Here, we investigate dune growth from an initial flatbed in a laboratory setting by continuously mapping the 3D bed topography using a line laser scanner combined with a 3D camera. High‐resolution profiles of flow velocity and sediment concentration providing both bedload and suspended sediment fluxes were obtained by deploying Acoustic Concentration and Velocity Profiler technology. Our analysis reveals that the magnitude of the dune slipface angle, which determines flow separation and controls turbulence production, adjusts to the imposed flow at time scales similar to the evolution of dune height and length. The initiation of a flow separation zone intensifies through scour, and results in acceleration of the dune growth. Gradients in sediment transport and the rate of dune growth are inherently linked to spatial variations in slipface angles. During dune growth, the slipface angle evolves differently than the ratio of dune height to length, which immediately reaches its equilibrium value after dune initiation.