MICROSTRUCTURE ANLAYSIS AND ENHANCEMENT OF NODULAR CAST IRON USING DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD

V.Sakthivel, P.Suresh, N.Mahalakshmi

Abstract: Digital image processing is the technique to process pixel variations on digital images. This paper employs the digital image processing procedure for microstructure analysis and enhancement of nodular cast iron properties inorder to determine the quality factors. This processing made to sharpen and enhance the microstructure before quantitative analysis. This analysis taken in the analog form of nodular cast iron was performed manually such that, it is time consuming for multiple set of images. To avoid this criteria probably, Digital Image Processing techniques are being used. Often the nodular cast iron images are corrupted or defected during transmission by impulse noise which is often filtered using median filters. In this paper, some of processing steps as pre-processing, segmentation, filtering process and edge detection are done on these images for effective and lossless transmission ensuring the counting of nodules in microstructure and detailed study of grain properties that correlates with the mechanical properties such as ductility, malleability and brittleness. Only 30% restoration of image applicable to an acceptable level is limited. A new filtering method – Resolution Based Median Filter (RBMF) is proposed which achieves more than 95% restoration of nodular cast iron images to an acceptable level. This method optimizes further microstructure analysis of grain smoothening and grain boundary detection using finite element simulation model by varying the intensity level of images.

Keywords: Digital Image Processing, Material Microstructure, Edge Detection, Grain Boundary, Resolution Based Median Filter (RBMF).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0404017