Model-based Surface Defect Detection and Condition Monitoring in Wire Ropes

Wire ropes are exposed to huge external powers everyday. Therefore strict rules for a regular visual inspection exist. Many approaches for textural defect detection in textiles or other materials exist. However, until today no real possibility to control rope attributes like lay length or diameter over the whole rope curse exist. To meet this drawback we present an automatic inspection approach based on a geometric rope model. The parameters of the rope model are estimated over time given raw 2-d image data and local surface defects are located by comparison of the real data with a 2-d projection of the ideal model