Fractal Shape Analysis of Tire Debris Particles: Preliminary Results and Applications

摘要

Particles of tread rubber debris produced by laboratory wear tests are imaged by light microscopy. The fractal dimension, D_F of the image perimeter is estimated. The sensitivity of D_F with respect to the image acquisition and processing parameters is determined. Particles belonging to two types of undifferentiated debris, low severity (LS) and rasping (R), respectively, are analyzed. The values of D_F have distributions, which, if suitably interpreted, allow the identification of either debris type with the following conditional probabilities: p _(LS|LS) = 0.71 and p _(R|R)= 0.81. The procedure can be eventually applied to environmental impact studies.