An integrated system for automatic wear particle analysis

The knowledge-based software system CASPA (computer aided systematic particle analysis), developed previously to help classify wear particles in terms of wear mode, has been updated and recoded for the MS Windows operating system. A similar change has been made to CAVE (computer aided vision engineering), a computer vision system which has been extended to analyse wear particle morphology automatically, in accordance with the attributes defined in CASPA, and using neural networks for classifications. These two systems are now linked, using Windows technology, with CASPA controlling the wear analysis, and using CAVE to carry out automatic analysis on single particles.