IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 47, NO.
2, APRIL 1998
Development of a Surface Defect
Inspection System Using Radiant Light
from Steel Products in a Hot Rolling Line
Takao Sugimoto and Tadao Kawaguchi
Abstract— The steel industry is constantly trying to reduce
production cost and improve quality by making the steel manu-
facturing processes continuous and faster. Currently, the rolling
process of steel production is largely automated, while the fin-
ishing process is not yet appreciably automated. The finishing
processes involve many tasks difficult to automate, such as defect
inspection and repairing the detected defects. In recent years,
however, many automated and labor-saving systems have been
developed for use in the finishing processes. The surface defect
inspection of steel products is the largest bottleneck in the
finishing process. This paper describes an inspection system
of steel surface defects for large sections, such as wide flange
beams and I-beams. This system is based on applied radiant
light and it senses the temperature deviation caused by defects.
The wavelength of the detector is optimized to improve the
signal-to-noise ratio. An optical attenuator was developed to
compensate for the known temperature distribution across the
product immediately after rolling. The image processor takes only
50 ms per image frame. Each time frame has the necessary image
information to detect defects.
Index Terms—Image processing, inspection, steel industry, sur-
face defect, visual light.
I. INTRODUCTION
C URRENTLY, the steel production rolling process is lar-
gely automated, while the finishing process is not yet
appreciably automated. The finishing processes involve many
tasks difficult to automate, such as defect inspection and the
repair of detected surface defects. In recent years, many auto-
mated labor-saving systems have been developed to reduce the
production cost and improve the quality of steel products, how-
ever, in the finishing process, quality assurance with respect to
surface defects is only partly automated and mostly performed
by visual inspection. Formerly, large-section steel products
were visually inspected. The automatically obtained defect
information should be selected as soon as possible after the
rolling process. The installation of a surface defect inspection
system in the hot rolling process will help to prevent rejects
from being generated in large quantities. Eddy-current meth-
ods [1], [2], ITV camera-based optical methods [3]–[5], and
other surface defect examination methods have been suggested
for application to the hot rolling process. The eddy-current
approach is effective when the object to be inspected moves
Manuscript received March 6, 1995; revised July 23, 1998.
T. Sugimoto is with the College of Science & Technology, Nihon Univer-
sity, Funabashi, Japan.
T. Kawaguchi is with the Faculty of Engineering, Seikei University,
Musashinou, Japan.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9456(98)09602-8.
0018–9456/98$10.00  1998 IEEE
409
fast and is relatively simple in shape. The optical approach
is relatively fast but is applied only as an auxiliary means of
visual inspection. This paper is concerned with the technology
that was developed based on new findings for detecting defects
by utilizing the temperature difference that develops across the
defects. An infrared detector was previously used for these
methods [6]–[8]. The detection wavelength was optimized to
improve the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, and the temperature
pattern peculiar to the cross sectional direction of the material
to be inspected was optically compensated to improve the
detection capability of the detector. Images obtained were
processed in real time for the hot rolling process. The results
obtained are described in detail below.
II. THE PRINCIPLE OF DETECTION
A. Defect Detection by Radiant Light from Steel Products
When there is a nonuniform region on the surface of the
hot metal, its temperature becomes different from that of the
surrounding uniform material. A method to detect defects
by utilizing this phenomenon was already proposed as noted
above [6]–[8]. Conventional surface defect detectors for hot
rolled steel, developed based on this principle, had very
small S/N ratios because the temperature difference between
the normal region and the defects was not large enough.
As a result, they did not perform satisfactorily in practical
applications. To increase the S/N ratio of the detecting signal,
the temperature difference (K) between the temperature
(K) of the nonuniform region and the temperature (K)
of the uniform region of the material should be detected large
difference. Planck’s law states that the radiant flux or spectral
radiation per 1 m wavelength radiated into a semispace from
the 1 m surface of a black body at a temperature (K) is
given by
W m (1)
If the effective detection wavelength range of the detector is
(m) to (m) and if there is a change (K) with respect
to the base metal temperature (K), the signal ratio of
and obtained by the detector is given by
(2)
410 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 1998

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 1. Results of simulation for the dependency of various spectra response of detectors. (a) Infrared. (b) Near infrared. (c) Visual light.

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Compensation of the detected signal with near infrared and visual light detector. (a) With near infrared. (b) With visual light.

where
(W m );
(m K);
(K);
defect temperature (K);
Planck’s constant (J s);
Boltzmann constant (J/K);
sensitivity of the detector at effective detection
wavelength per meter (m) (A/W).
Using (2), the detection signal ratios were simulated
over the base metal temperature range of 900–1500K for
temperature differences of 40, 80, and 120K for three types
of detectors:
1) a detector with a photoelectric transfer device employing
mercury, cadmium, and tellurium having an effective
sensitivity range in the infrared region of 3–5 m;
2) a detector with a photoelectric film of silicon having an
effective sensitivity range in the near infrared region of Fig. 3. Various kinds of steel products to be inspected and their size range.
500–900 nm;
3) a detector with a photoelectric film having an effective The results are given in Fig. 1(a)–(c), respectively. As is
sensitivity range in the visible light region of 400–600 evident from Fig. 1, the visible light region detector provides
nm. higher signal-to-noise ratio than the other two detectors for
SUGIMOTO AND KAWAGUCHI: SURFACE DEFECT INSPECTION SYSTEM
(a)
Fig. 4. Oscilloscope trace of directly detected signals on the visual light detector without optical attenuator. (a) Detected signal from a flange. (b)
Detected signal from a web.
Fig. 5. Optical compensation method using the linear slit attenuator.
the same temperature differences. As readily understood from
this result, when the object to be inspected has a constant
temperature difference, that temperature difference can be best
detected at the shortest possible wavelength, but the short-
wavelength energy radiated from steel products is so small
that it should be applied to satisfactorily detect signal. For
this reason, charge coupled device (CCD) cameras with the
above-mentioned visible region characteristic are applied in
the system. To confirm this result, two ITV cameras, one
with the characteristic noted in 2) above and the other with
the characteristic noted in 3) above, were installed close to
each other and used to record a defect on a wide flange
beam of the base metal at a temperature of 1100K just
after rolling. The detected defect signals are shown near the
center of each of the trace in Fig. 2(a) and (b), respectively.
The results of Fig. 2 validate the above-mentioned simulation
results.
B. Applicable Steel Products and Optical
Compensation of Surface Temperature [10]
This system can be applied to wide flange beams, I-beams,
sheet piles, channels, checkered plates, and many other steel
products, some of which are shown in Fig. 3. Each of these
steel products is available in many sizes as well. Take a wide
411
(b)
flange beam as an example, the cross sectional temperature
distribution of the wide flange beam is low at the center of
the web (indicated by the arrow a in Fig. 3) and high at
the joint with the flange, while it is high at the center of
the flange (indicated by the arrow b in Fig. 3) and low at
the edge of the flange. The flange and web surfaces of the
wide flange beam right after rolling were photographed with
a detector having the spectral sensitivity shown in Fig. 1(c).
The results are shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively. The
temperature difference between the center and the edge was
measured to be about 200K. To avoid the operating range for
a detector caused by temperature deviation between the center
and edge, optical compensation is required to achieve uniform.
The method illustrated in Fig. 5 was devised to optically
compensate detection signals for the surface temperature.
Optical attenuators were installed to reduce the amount of light
from the center of the flange and from the edge of the web.
Various shapes of attenuators were made and examined for
detection waveform uniformity as shown in Fig. 6. Attenuators
of the shapes shown in Fig. 6(c) best met the requirements.
The upper attenuator is for the flange and the lower attenuator
for the web. The detection waveforms compensated for by
these attenuators are shown for the flange surface in Fig. 7(a)
and for the web surface in Fig. 7(b). The original waveforms
are shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b), respectively.
412 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 1998
Fig. 6. Examined optical attenuator shapes and their installed position for the wide flange beam.
(a)
Fig. 7. Compensated results using the optical linear attenuators. (a) Detected signal from the flange. (b) Detected signal from the web.
C. Sampling of Defect Signals
The compensated wave form of detection signals by atten-
uators as described in the previous section produces relatively
uniform wave forms, but not such uniform images that each
frame can be binarized at a threshold level. Since linear-slit
attenuators are used, the peripheral and central portions of
the image differ in the amount of received light and, hence,
in signal levels. To improve the defect detection capability,
detection signals were electrically filtered and equalized to
sample defects. Since the rolling speed of materials reaches as
high as 5.5 m/s, nearly real-time processing was performed.
The methods involved are described below.
1) Sampling of Defect Information by Filtering: To
achieve the required uniformity, detection signals were
electrically filtered by focusing attention on the differences
between the frequency components of defect signals and the
frequency components of changed light quantity. The block
diagram of the filtering process is shown in Fig. 8. If is
the signal of the original image in the longitudinal direction,
the filtered image signal is given by
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(b)
where
smoothed image signal of first-order lag term;
smoothed image signal of second-order lag term;
next predicted smoothed signal;
sampling period.
The original image is shown in Fig. 9(a), the binary image
of the original image is shown in Fig. 9(b), and the filtered
binary image is shown in Fig. 9(c). The image of Fig. 9(b)
is particularly dark in the top and bottom positions, attesting
to the difficulty of sampling defect signals by binarization
alone.
2) Defect Size Measurement and High-Speed Processing:
Defects vary in harmfulness with their size, so that it is
important to measure their size. After filtering and binarization,
the binary image is projected in the vertical direction as shown
in Fig. 10. The vertical dimension of the projected image
is the vertical size of the defect, and the width of the
projected image is the equivalent width of the defect. It is ideal
if the defect is similarly processed in the width direction, but a
simplified method is employed here to shorten the processing
time.
3) Control of Shutter Speed: Each large-section steel prod-
uct has a temperature difference of 100K between the front and
rear ends due to temperature nonuniformity in the reheating
furnace. The amount of light must be adjusted thus automat-
SUGIMOTO AND KAWAGUCHI: SURFACE DEFECT INSPECTION SYSTEM 413

Fig. 8. Block diagram of the digital filter.

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 9. Result of the processed digital filtering. (a) Original image. (b) Binarized image. (c) Digital filtering image.

ically. The amount of light cannot in principle be controlled

by adjusting the aperture of the lens and is, instead, controlled
by adjusting the shutter speed. The average brightness of two
horizontal lines in the image signals introduced is determined,
compared with a preset reference value, and used as a control
signal. The two horizontal lines are used to shorten the
processing time to a practically acceptable extent.

III. DETECTION SYSTEM

Fig. 10. Measurement method of the defect size.

A. Image Processor
The maximum rolling speed, maximum width, and maxi-
mum center deviation during transfer of steel products to be
inspected were 5.5 m/s, 512 mm, and ±10 mm, respectively.
The necessary field of view is thus 532 mm in the horizontal
direction. Assuming that the effective field of view is 80%,
the total required field of view of the ITV camera in the
horizontal direction is 665 mm. When an ITV camera of
the NTSC format with an aspect ratio of 3 : 4 is used, the
field of view for the steel product to be inspected is 499
mm in the vertical direction. The steel product moves 183.3
mm for the ITV camera’s frame time of 33.3 ms. The time
allowed for the continuous inspection of the steel product
414 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 1998

Fig. 11. Configuration of the surface defect inspection system.

(a) (b)
Fig. 12. Comparison with an actual defect and its detected image. (a) Actual defect. (b) Detected image.

corresponds to two frames or is a maximum of 66.6 ms. The B. Configuration of System

image entry and projection time is 33.3 ms, the gray level
integration time is 33.3 ms, and the defect detection processing
time is 50 ms. Gray level and rolling speed measurement
processing are performed by the master CPU to decide the
shutter speed as mentioned above, and detecting area and
detecting defect processing are performed by the slave CPU,
respectively. The original image , processed image
, and previous image are stored
in three frame memories. The frame memories are used on
a rotational basis to assure some margin in defect detection
processing.
Fig. 11 shows the configuration of the system. The system
is installed just after a high-pressure water descaler at the
rear of a finishing mill at a wide-flange mill. The descaler
removes scale from steel products to be inspected and lowers
the temperature of defects to improve the S/N ratio of detection
signals. Four ITV cameras are installed to cover the flange
outside surfaces and the web top and bottom surfaces as
illustrated in Fig. 11. An optical slit attenuator is provided
between each ITV camera and the product to be inspected to
compensate for the temperature pattern characteristic of the
SUGIMOTO AND KAWAGUCHI: SURFACE DEFECT INSPECTION SYSTEM
Fig. 13. Detectability of defects for the system.
products to be inspected. One type of attenuator is used for
the flange surface, and another type of attenuator is used for
the web surface. The two types can be applied to all of the
product types and sizes shown in Fig. 3. The position of each
attenuator is adjusted in the distance from the products to be
inspected and in the width direction. The attenuator position,
shutter speed, and other parameters specified for each type of
steel product to be inspected are measured and tabulated before
the start-up of the system. When a product type code is entered
into the system computer, these parameters are automatically
set.
IV. RESULTS OF DETECTION PERFORMANCE TEST
1) Calibration Method of the System: The harmful surface
defect is decided by the dimension of longitudinal and cross
sectional lengths. The system can set up the two sizes inde-
pendently. The system is calibrated by the backlighted test
chart pattern without an optical attenuator. After calibrating
the system, a test is performed so that the detected defect size
to be rejected can be decided.
2) The Environment Effect: It is important that the system
must keep the environment clear and prevent surrounding heat
radiation or steam moisture with dust. This is especially true
for the ITV camera installed below the rolling steel. The
camera box is cooled by water and the window of the box
is at 45 to the horizontal. The air blowers for the window are
arranged in three lines along the optical path and they supply
high-pressure dried air.
3) Results of Performance Test: The images produced by
the system observed on the ITV monitor show clear and
noiseless pictures. The descaler contributes to suppress the
noise component. Some over-detection occurred with sheet
piling, but its magnitude was not excessive. An actual defect
and its image on the detector monitor are shown in Fig. 12. To
investigate its detection performance, the system was tested on
415
about 11 300 steel products. The results are shown in Fig. 13.
They may be summarized as follows.
1) The detection rate is 100% for all of the product types
and sizes concerned.
2) The over-detection rate is less than 1%, as compared
with the target value of 5%.
These results show that the system can perform stably from
a practical point of view.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The system provided the following new findings about
the technology of detecting surface defects by using the
temperature difference between normal and defect portions.
1) Simulation was performed to improve the S/N ratio of
detection signals, and a detector with optimum spectral
sensitivity was selected.
2) The cross sectional temperature pattern characteristic of
steel was compensated for by an optical signal attenuator
for four types of large section steel products for 2000
sizes of the products.
3) To meet the rolling speed of 5.5 ms, the processing
method was simplified, and image processing was com-
pleted within 66 ms per frame by parallel processing.
The system, featuring a very high detection capability and a
low over-detection rate as well as a very fast image processing
technology, contributes to reducing the cost of large-section
steel products by the visual inspection and the quality assur-
ance of large-section steel products. The system was planed at
Nippon Steel’s Kimitsu Works in September 1988, the model
machine was developed and installed in the rolling line, and the
performance test was done in February 1989. After collection
of the initially preset values per product size (such data as
shutter speed and attenuator position) and the defect detection
capability per product size, the system has been running as a
commercial operation in December 1993.
REFERENCES
[1] E. Fletcher, “High speed automatic surface inspection of steel billets,”
NDT Int., pp. 163–166, 1979.
[2] T. Sugimoto et al., “Development of eddy current inspection system for
detection of surface defects on hot steel slabs,” IFAC Automat. Mining,
Mineral, Metal Processing, pp. 401–405, 1987.
[3] D. N. Saridis et al., “Automatic surface inspection system for flat rolled
steel,” Automatica, vol. 15, pp. 505–520, 1979.
[4] T. Suzuki et al., “Automatic detection of hot slab subsurface inclusions,”
SPIE, vol. 665, pp. 91–95, 1986.
[5] Y. Kozaki et al., “Development of hot slab surface defect detecting
device,” in IFAC Control Science Technol. (8th Triennial World Congr.),
1981, pp. 2557–2562.
[6] Y. Okamoto et al., “A study of defect detection method using infrared
detection (1),” J. NDI, vol. 38-5, pp. 394–399, 1989, in Japanese.
[7] , “A study of defect detection method using infrared detection
(2),” J. NDI, vol. 38-6, pp. 525–530, 1989, in Japanese.
[8] , “Detection of surface flaws by infrared radiation sensor,” in
Tech. Dig. 7th Sensor Symp., 1988, pp. 107–110.
[9] I. Ichizima et al., “Method for detecting surface defects in hot rolled
steel,” Japanese Patent Application 52983/1982, in Japanese.
[10] T. Sugimoto et al., “Method for detecting surface defects in hot rolled
steel,” Japanese Patent Application 48735/1982, in Japanese.
416 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 47, NO. 2, APRIL 1998
Takao Sugimoto received the B.E. degree in preci-
sion machinery engineering from Nihon University,
Tokyo, Japan, the M.E. degree in precision mechan-
ical engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in applied
physics from Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan,
respectively.
He was engaged in research and development in
nondestructive inspection systems and measurement
and image processing technology in the R&D Center
in Nippon Steel Corporation, Kanagawa, Japan. He
is now a Professor at the College of Science and
Technology, Nihon University, Funabashi City, Japan. His research interests
include measurement instrumentation, image measurement method, and image
data.
Dr. Sugimoto was awarded the Outstanding Technical Paper Prize in
1992 and 1994 by The Society of Instrumentation and Control Engineers
of Japan (SICE). He is a member of IEEE Measurement and Instrumentation
Society, IEEE industrial Electronics Society, the Society of Instrumentation
and Control Engineers of Japan (SICE), and the Japan Society of Precision
Engineering.
Tadao Kawaguchi received the B.E. and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering from Keio
University, Tokyo, Japan. He was engaged in
automation systems in the R&D Center of Nippon
Steel Cooperation, Kanagawa, Japan.
He is now a Professor, engaged in research
development in dynamics, at Seikei University,
Musashinou City, Japan. His research interests
include nonlinear control systems and measurement
instrumentation.
Dr. Kawaguchi was awarded the outstanding
Technical Paper Prize in 1985, 1992, 1994, and 1995 by The Society of
Instrumentation and Control engineers of Japan (SICE). He is a member of
SICE and The Japan Society of Precision Engineering.