Search

Nitrile Butadiene Rubber (NBR) is commonly used in ships' water-lubricated tail bearings. However, sediment in the water significantly affects these bearings' friction and wear performance. This study investigates NBR test blocks' friction and wear behavior in conjunction with ZCuSn10Zn2 copper ring friction pairs within a sediment-laden water lubrication environment. Two primary factors were considered: sediment particle concentration and sediment particle size. Friction and wear tests were conducted under pure water and sediment-laden conditions using the ZY-1 ring block friction and wear tester. The friction coefficients, wear quantities, and variations in mass concentrations and sediment particle sizes were measured and compared. The surface morphology of the test blocks was analyzed using a laser confocal microscope. The findings indicate that as sediment concentration increases, the particle size's impact on NBR's abrasive wear diminishes. The variation in particle size directly influences the number of particles that penetrate the interface between the friction partners and the nature of three-body wear. Conversely, changes in particle concentration primarily affect the extent of wear; specifically, both the wear volume and the average coefficient of friction of the NBR specimens increase with rising sediment concentration. The wear mechanisms observed on the surface of the NBR test blocks are predominantly characterized by micro-cutting, rolling wear, and the coexistence of both wear modes. This study offers valuable insights for the design and optimization of water-lubricated bearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenotypic analysis of wheat spikes plays an important role in wheat growth management, plant breeding, and yield estimation. However, the dense and tight arrangement of spikelets and grains on the spikes makes the phenotyping more challenging. This study proposed a rapid and accurate image-based method for in-field wheat spike phenotyping consisting of three steps: wheat spikelet segmentation, grain number classification, and total grain number counting. Wheat samples ranging from the early filling period to the mature period were involved in the study, including three varieties: Zhengmai 618, Yannong 19, and Sumai 8. In the first step, the in-field collected images of wheat spikes were optimized by perspective transformation, augmentation, and size reduction. The YOLOv8-seg instance segmentation model was used to segment spikelets from wheat spike images. In the second step, the number of grains in each spikelet was classified by a machine learning model like the Support Vector Machine (SVM) model, utilizing 52 image features extracted for each spikelet, involving shape, color, and texture features as the input. Finally, the total number of grains on each wheat spike was counted by adding the number of grains in the corresponding spikelets. The results showed that the YOLOv8-seg model achieved excellent segmentation performance, with an average precision (AP) @[0.50:0.95] and accuracy (A) of 0.858 and 100%. Meanwhile, the SVM model had good classification performance for the number of grains in spikelets, and the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score reached 0.855, 0.860, 0.865, and 0.863, respectively. Mean absolute error (MAE) and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were as low as 1.04 and 5% when counting the total number of grains in the frontal view wheat spike images. The proposed method meets the practical application requirements of obtaining trait parameters of wheat spikes and contributes to intelligent and non-destructive spike phenotyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]