Digital Fringe Projection-Based Clamping Force Estimation Algorithm for Railway Fasteners.

The inspection of railway fasteners to assess their clamping force can be used to evaluate the looseness of the fasteners and improve railway safety. Although there are various methods for inspecting railway fasteners, there is still a need for non-contact, fast inspection without installing additional devices on fasteners. In this study, a system that uses digital fringe projection technology to measure the 3D topography of the fastener was developed. This system inspects the looseness through a series of algorithms, including point cloud denoising, coarse registration based on fast point feature histograms (FPFH) features, fine registration based on the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm, specific region selection, kernel density estimation, and ridge regression. Unlike the previous inspection technology, which can only measure the geometric parameters of fasteners to characterize the tightness, this system can directly estimate the tightening torque and the bolt clamping force. Experiments on WJ-8 fasteners showed a root mean square error of 9.272 N·m and 1.94 kN for the tightening torque and clamping force, demonstrating that the system is sufficiently precise to replace manual measurement and can substantially improve inspection efficiency while evaluating railway fastener looseness.

A color image contrast enhancement method based on improved PSO.

Image contrast enhancement uses the object intensity transformation function to maximize the amount of information to enhance an image. In this paper, the image enhancement problem is regarded as an optimization problem, and the particle swarm algorithm is used to obtain the optimal solution. First, an improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is proposed. In this algorithm, individual optimization, local optimization, and global optimization are used to adjust the particle's flight direction. In local optimization, the topology is used to induce comparison and communication between particles. The sparse penalty term in speed update formula is added to adjust the sparsity of the algorithm and the size of the solution space. Second, the three channels of the color images R, G, and B are represented by a quaternion matrix, and an improved particle swarm algorithm is used to optimize the transformation parameters. Finally, contrast and brightness elements are added to the fitness function. The fitness function is used to guide the particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimize the parameters in the transformation function. This paper verifies via two experiments. First, improved particle swarm algorithm is simulated and tested. By comparing the average values of the four algorithms under the three types of 6 test functions, the average value is increased by at least 15 times in the single-peak 2 test functions: in the multi-peak and multi-peak fixed-dimension 4 test functions, this paper can always search for the global optimal solution, and the average value is either the same or at least 1.3 times higher. Second, the proposed algorithm is compared with other evolutionary algorithms to optimize contrast enhancement, select images in two different data sets, and calculate various evaluation indicators of different algorithms under different images. The optimal value is the algorithm in this paper, and the performance indicators are at least a 5% increase and a minimum 15% increase in algorithm running time. Final results show that the effects the proposed algorithm have obvious advantages in both subjective and qualitative aspects.

Optimized Design of an Ultrasonic-Based High-Efficiency Wireless Passive Monitoring System for Sealed Metal Compartments.

The condition monitoring (CM) of sealed metal compartments (SMCs) is an urgently required restructure. Ultrasound penetrates SMCs to power and communicate with built-in sensors, enabling the CM of SMCs. However, current ultrasonic wireless power transfer and data communication (UWPTADC) systems are large and complex, and limited by the efficiency of energy transfer and data reliability. In this paper, an optimized design of a high-efficiency wireless passive monitoring system using UWPTADC techniques is proposed for SMC. The circuit model of the system is developed and analyzed to achieve an optimal design for efficient wireless power transfer and effective data communication coupling. A test system was constructed using a steel wall of 11 mm thickness as a validation object. At the ultrasonic carrier frequency of 1.045 MHz, the system has an energy transfer efficiency of 60%, and a communication rate of 50 kbps. In addition, the system realizes temperature and humidity monitoring inside a 13 mm thick cylindrical SMC, simulating the process of ultrasonic CM of an actual engine compartment. The system provides a wiring-free and battery-free solution for CM in SMCs, advancing CM in aerospace, marine and other fields.

Parameter extraction method for the twisted pair cable with rectangular connectors.

Cables play an important role in transmitting energy and information. In this article, in order to obtain the S-parameters of the special twisted pair cable with rectangular connectors, a de-embedding method of the transmission matrix is proposed to deal with the two adapters ends of the cable. According to the frequency-dependent RLGC(f) model, the cable characteristics are extracted in the frequency range of 10 MHz to 200 MHz through conventional and modified methods respectively. The frequency-domain analysis shows that the inherent capacity of modified method can decrease the errors especially due to the discontinuities of hyperbolic functions. This research supplies an advantageous modelling approach for the cable to improve its robustness against disturbances in the S-parameters measurement that cannot be decreased with the calibration procedure.