PSI - Issue 37

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect

www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 37 (2022) 274–281

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of Pedro Miguel Guimaraes Pires Moreira Abstract Laser processing of cutting tool materials particularly cemented carbides can induce many surface defects including porosity, balling, and micro-cracks. When present in the microstructure of cutting tools, micro-cracks can lead to chipping and early failure. The detection and identification of cracks can be used to predict tool performance post laser processing. To develop a method for crack identification scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images were used. The manual review of SEM images is subjective and time consuming. This study presents a method to identify and quantify cracks from an SEM microstructure of tungsten carbide (WC) in MATLAB. Image processing algorithms were used to segment crack regions from other surface defects and the background microstructure; and subsequently to extract crack geometry and information. The results show successful segmentation of cracks from SEM images with an identification accuracy greater than 95 % across a range of different laser processing parameters. © 2022 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) ICSI 2021 The 4th International Conference on Structural Integrity Crack Identification in Tungsten Carbide Using Image Processing Techniques Kafayat Eniola Hazzan a , Manuela Pacella a* a Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU, UK

Peer-review under responsibility of Pedro Miguel Guimaraes Pires Moreira Keywords: Crack identification; Laser processing; Tungsten carbide; Image processing

1. Introduction The presence of cracks in cutting tool materials reduces the overall strength and fatigue life (Denkena et al., 2018). Laser engineered tungsten carbide (WC) often present micro-cracks due to the thermal and mechanical mismatch properties between WC and the cobalt (Co) binder ((Hasan et al., 2019), (Fang et al., 2020), (Hazzan et al., 2021)).

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 (0) 1509564800. E-mail address: m.pacella@lboro.ac.uk

2452-3216 © 2022 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of Pedro Miguel Guimaraes Pires Moreira

2452-3216 © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of Pedro Miguel Guimaraes Pires Moreira 10.1016/j.prostr.2022.01.085