Gerald Zauner

Fachhochschule Oberösterreich | fh-ooe · Automation Engineering

This paper presents an automated high-speed rolling mark recognition system for railroad rails utilizing image processing techniques. Rolling marks, which consist of numbers, letters, and special characters, were engraved into the rail web as 3D information. These rolling marks provide crucial details regarding the rail manufacturer, steel quality,...

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) has been used for several years as a non-contact and non-destructive measurement method for rail track analysis with the aim of recording the condition of ballast and substructures. As the recorded data sets typically cover a distance of many kilometers, the evaluation of these data involves considerable effort and co...

With increased use of light-weight materials with low factors of safety, non-destructive testing becomes increasingly important. Thanks to the advancement of infrared camera technology, pulse thermography is a cost efficient way to detect subsurface defects non-destructively. However, currently available evaluation algorithms have either a high com...

Noise plays a fundamental role in connection with theoretical limits in the field of inverse thermal problems, since the solution accuracy for such inverse problems is decisively influenced by noise-induced errors in temperature measurements. There are eight standard assumptions proposed by Beck and Özisik [1], [2], [3], [4] for the statistical des...

This application paper presents a machine vision solution for the quality inspection of flat glass products. A contact image sensor (CIS) is used to generate digital images of the glass surfaces. The presented machine vision based quality inspection at the end of the production line aims to classify five different glass defect types. The defect ima...

In this paper we present a method for the characterization of (semi-transparent) thin film growth during PACVD processes (plasma assisted chemical vapour deposition), based on analysis of thermal radiation by means of nearinfrared imaging. Due to interference effects during thin film growth, characteristic emissivity signal variations can be observ...

Taking a look at actual developments in the field of bioinformatics, computer support in different fields of medicine and biology is an increasing field of interest. Especially for recognition and classification of various kinds of diseases, researchers already identified the usage of data mining techniques as supporting tool for computer supported...

When measuring rapid temperature change as well as measuring high temperatures (<2000 K) commercial pyrometers reach the limits of their performance very quickly. Thus a novel type of high temperature measurement system using a high-speed camera as a two-color pyrometer is introduced. In addition to the high temporal resolution, ranging between 10...

Although classification of astrocytic tumors is standardized by the WHO grading system, which is mainly based on microscopy-derived, histomorphological features, there is great interobserver variability. The main causes are thought to be the complexity of morphological details varying from tumor to tumor and from patient to patient, variations in t...

The present paper deals with the application of atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a tool for morphological characterization of histological brain tumor samples. Data mining techniques will be applied for automatic identification of brain tumor tissues based on AFM images by means of classifying grade II and IV tumors. The rapid advancement of AFM in...

Effective water management is one of the key strategies for improving low temperature PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) fuel cell performance and durability. Phenomena such as membrane dehydration, catalyst layer flooding, mass transport and fluid flow regimes can be affected by the interaction, distribution and movement of water in flow plate channel...

Micro-tubular solid oxide fuel cells (MT-SOFCs) are a much smaller version of larger tubular SOFCs. They are operational within seconds and allow a higher power density per volume than the larger version. Hence they are a potential technology for automotive, auxiliary and small scale power supply devices. In this study a commercially available comp...

The purpose of the first part of this study was to compare four different temperature measuring methods. The application of these tools for possible temperature monitoring or calibration of monitors of microtubular solid oxide fuel cells (MT-SOFCs) is explored. It was found that a thermographic camera is very useful to visualize the temperature gra...

In this chapter we present some results regarding our study of the wall temperature of MT-SOFCs with the use of a thermal camera and investigate the use of some other methods of temperature measurement that can be applied to MT-SOFCs that can aid in simulation validation.

Micro-Tubular-Solid-Oxide-Fuel-Cells (MT-SOFCs) are primarily being developed to be used as electricity producing devices. However, they are also an ideal tool for investigating the effects of gas cross flows, with various Reynolds numbers and specie concentrations, on the mass transfer rates around the perimeter of a high temperature cylindrical e...

Active infrared thermography is a method for non-destructive testing (NDT) of materials and components. In pulsed thermography (PT), a brief and high intensity flash is used to heat the sample. The decay of the sample surface temperature is detected and recorded by an infrared camera. Any subsurface anomaly (e.g. inclusion, delamination, etc.) give...

Active Thermography has become a powerful tool in the field of non-destructive testing (NDT) in recent years. This infrared thermal imaging technique is used for non-contact inspection of materials and components by visualizing thermal surface contrasts after a thermal excitation. The imaging modality combined with the possibility of detecting and...

In this work a new method for calculating the optical properties of an absorbing film grown on substrates, including the real and imaginary part of the index of refraction is shown. In particular the thermal radiation of a growing oxide-film on a heated steel specimen is measured by a CCD camera with a near infrared (1000nm) band-pass filter. The o...

Vibration measurement is of great interest in many fields (e.g. mechanical engineering). Laser Doppler Vibrometry (LDV) provides a non-contact method of measuring vibrations very exactly (due to zero mass loading) and greatly increases the investigation capabilities of experimental modal analysis. By applying a standard FFT-algorithm it is possible...

In this paper a new segmentation method for highly precise inclusion detection in 3D X-ray computed tomography (CT), based on multiresolution denoising methods, is presented. The aim of this work is the automatic 3D-segmentation of small graphite inclusions in cast iron samples. Industrial X-ray computed tomography of metallic samples often suffers...

We present a new approach based on Active Thermography by which it is possible to produce images of porosity in Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastics that correspond striking well with results obtained by ultrasonic testing. We applied the method of Pulsed Thermography by using flashes of light for the generation of heat. The evolution of surface temper...

Active infrared thermography is a non-destructive testing (NDT) technique used for non-contact inspection of components and materials by temporal mapping of thermal patterns by means of infrared imaging. Through the application of a short heat pulse, thermal waves of various amplitudes and frequencies are launched into the specimen allowing a signa...

Online monitoring systems of thermo-chemical heat treatment processes as nitriding, nitocarburizing , carburizing, for increasing hardness, wear resistance, endurance strength and/or corrosion resistance... are up to now available as gas/atmosphere monitoring systems. This paper presents a new inspection system based on a CCD camera system for moni...

Plasma nitriding belongs to the group of the thermo chemical surface heat treatments. During this process nitrogen is dissociated into the surface of the material increasing hardness, wear resistance, endurance strength and/or corrosion resistance. This paper presents a new inspection system based on a CCD camera system for monitoring such heat tre...

This paper deals with the enhancement of CCD- (charge-coupled device) based thermal images by applying multiresolution image denoising methods. The main focus of this experimental work lies in the attempt to determine and visualize the surface temperature of heated metal parts in the temperature range of approx. 300°C to 500°C. The aim is measureme...

Plasma nitriding is an industrial surface hardening process which involves diffusion of nitrogen atoms into the metal surface to enhance material properties. The aim of this work is the development of a low cost device (based on a standard near infrared enhanced CCD camera) for the inline-characterization of such surface modifications during thermo...

The temperature-mapping system presented is based on a grayscale CCD camera, rotating near infrared filters and an image processing software which is used for thermal imaging of heated metal parts in heat treatment processes (plasma nitriding). Due to relatively low process temperatures of about 300°C - 500°C the received light intensity of the glo...

In many industrial processes knowledge of the two-dimensional thermal distribution is of great importance. Conventional infrared based systems (MIR, FIR) provide very accurate results, but their quality also comes at high cost, and moreover these systems cannot always be properly applied in every case, e.g. due to problems concerning IR-radiation a...

Thermal imaging systems are usually based on IR-camera systems analyzing the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum to carry out temperature measurements. These systems are very accurate but also very expensive. A "low-cost" thermal-vision-system based on a standard CCD color video camera in combination with an image processing system is pre...

Active thermography, in particular Pulse Thermography (PT), is a non-destructive testing method for subsurface defect detection and material characterization. The measurement principle is based on the analysis of an externally generated heat flow which is distorted by flaws or voids. Pulsed Phase Thermography (PPT) was introduced as a signal proces...

The present paper deals with the enhancement of X-ray computed tomography (CT) images based on multiresolution image denoising methods (wavelets, platelets). The term 'denoising' describes the attempt to remove noise and retain the signal regardless of the frequency content of the signal. The main focus of this experimental work, conducted on an in...