Imaging, Microscopy and Spectroscopy

Study on characteristic parameters of wear particle boundary

G. B. Li^a1, Y. H. Lin^a2, Y. P. Lu^a3 and D. L. Guan^a1

Marine Engineering College, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, 116026, P.R. China

State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation (Southwest Petroleum University), Chengdu, 610500, P.R. China

School of Materials Science and Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, P.R. China

Abstract

As the product of the wear process, the wear particles record the rich information to reflect the state of the equipment's inner abrasion. Analysis of the wear particles in lubricating or hydraulic oils becomes one important branch of diagnosing the wear states of machine parts. Extracting characteristic parameter is an indispensable means to analyse wear particles. In this paper, a method to extract the characteristic parameters of the wear particle boundary based on chaos theory has been discussed. The concept of boundary wave has been firstly conducted, and then based on the Shannon entropy and the theory of phase reconstruction, the concept and the arithmetic of the singular entropy have been conducted. It has been shown that the boundary wave of the wear particles is characterised as chaos, so the singular entropy can be used to describe the complexity of the boundary of the wear particles. Therefore the singular entropy can be considered as one of the characteristic parameters of the wear particles.

(Received July 19 2009)

(Revised January 18 2010)

(Accepted July 27 2010)

(Online publication October 8 2010)

guobinli88@yahoo.com.cn