The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Evaluation of collision properties of spheres using high-speed video analysis
Author:	Yu, Jian
View Online:	njit-etd1993-167 (x, 56 pages ~ 2.9 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Mechanical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Dave, Rajesh N. (Committee chair) Rosato, Anthony D. (Committee member) Fischer, Ian Sanford (Committee member)
Date:	1993-10
Keywords:	Rotational motion (Rigid dynamics) -- Analysis -- Automation Motion -- Analysis -- Automation Collisions (Physics) Image processing Computer vision Sphere
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Experimental evaluation of the collision properties of spheres is performed using video image analysis techniques. A high-speed Kodak EktaPro1000 video camera is utilized to record a collision sequence between two spheres at 1000 frames/sec, and then the images are analyzed to calculate three dimensional translation and rotation before and after the collision. These quantities are used to compute the collision properties for a pair of one inch nylon spheres, i.e. the coefficient of friction, and the coefficients of normal and tangential restitution. The focus of the thesis is on image analysis techniques that provide high accuracy results even though the image resolution is very low, i.e. 240x192 pixels. The procedure developed here can be extended to smaller size spheres and can also be applicable to other motion analysis expenments involving low resolution images.