Measuring the unevenness of yarn apparent diameter from yarn sequence images

This article presents a novel method for measuring the unevenness of yarn apparent diameter based on yarn sequence images captured from a moving yarn. A dynamic threshold module was designed to gain the global threshold for segmenting yarns in the sequence images. In the module, a K-means clustering algorithm was employed to classify the pixels of each frame in the sequence into two clusters—yarn and background. The cluster center of the current frame was used as the initial value of the cluster center for the next frame in the sequence to expedite the segmentation process. From the segmented yarn image, the yarn core was further extracted utilizing the characteristics of yarn hairiness, and two judgment templates were adopted to remove burrs, isolated points and unrelated small areas in the images. The yarn apparent diameter was measured on the yarn core at a given interval. The same kind of yarns were tested by using this method and Uster Evenness Tester 5. The experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately detect the unevenness of yarn apparent diameter and provide new useful information about yarn unevenness, such as the short-term, the long-term, and the periodic variations of yarn apparent diameters. (paper)