Pattern recognition and size determination of internal wood defects based on wavelet neural networks

This paper presented the results of a preliminary study on detecting internal wood defects using an ultrasound technique coupled with wavelet transform and artificial neural networks analysis. At room temperature in the laboratory, the type and size of the wood defects in 275 Elm specimens were detected using a RSM-SY5 ultrasonic instrument. The original signals of the Elm specimens were decomposed using wavelet packets, the energy variation of each node in the fifth layer was calculated, and back-propagation artificial neural networks (BP ANN) were trained and employed for wood defect recognition. The energy variation caused by wood defects mostly depends on the degree of the defect's deterioration (i.e., the more serious the wood defect's deterioration, the larger the energy variation). By comparing the energy variation of all 32 node signals in the fifth layer wavelet packet, the variation of the node (5,0) was the largest and contained the most defect information. The node (5,0) was used as the input in back-propagation artificial neural networks in order to detect the type of defects. The accuracy rate for Elm specimens was at least 90%. The same method was used to test the size and position of the hole-defects in Elm specimens with an accuracy rate of at least 80%.