QUANTITATIVE MEASUREMENT OF DISPERSION OF CARBON-BLACK IN RUBBER BY AN IMAGE-PROCESSING TECHNIQUE

In this article, the quantification of dispersion of carbon black in rubber is done by an image-processing technique. Surfaces, having different dispersion ratings, are mostly textured. These textured surfaces are digitized and the images are analyzed for quantification. Textured images are suitably represented by a closed set of orthogonal polynomials. The presence of texture has been identified by suitably measuring the orthogonal effects. The textured surfaces are described locally by pronum and globally by prospectrum. Mean, variance, and Fisher distance were computed from the prospectrums and are correlated to various dispersion ratings. There is a linear relationship between the calculated mean and the dispersion rating. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.