Applications of Profile Filtering in the Dimensional Metrology of Fuel Cell Plates

Published

May 14, 2013

Author(s)

Balasubramanian Muralikrishnan, Wei Ren, Eric S. Stanfield, Dennis S. Everett, Xiaoyu A. Zheng, Theodore D. Doiron

Abstract

We describe the application of several surface profile filters as an enabling tool in the dimensional measurements of an engineering artifact, namely, a fuel cell plate. We recently reported work on the development of a non-contact system for dimensional metrology of bipolar fuel cell plates. That system is comprised of two laser spot triangulation probes that acquire profile data across a plate. While the non-contact system provides rapid measurements (measurement speed of 100 mm/s to 500 mm/s), the data is noisy and cannot be used directly to obtain features of interest such as channel depth and width. In this paper, we show how different surface profile filters such as the spline, morphological, and robust filters, can be employed to identify and suppress outliers and to produce a mean line that serves as a substitute geometry from which we can determine features of interest. Further, we compare the non-contact probe data against contact probe measurements made using a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). Surface profile filters are again useful in correcting the reference data for tip size and also in removing any free form deformation in both data sets prior to parameter evaluation and comparison.

Citation

Measurement Science and Technology

Volume

24

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Dimensional metrology, Filtering, Fuel cell, Laser triangulation, Non-contact

Citation

Muralikrishnan, B. , Ren, W. , Stanfield, E. , Everett, D. , Zheng, X. and Doiron, T. (2013), Applications of Profile Filtering in the Dimensional Metrology of Fuel Cell Plates, Measurement Science and Technology, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=913301 (Accessed October 7, 2025)