The application of 3D-motif analysis to characterize diamond grinding wheel topography

•The 3D-motif analysis is adopted to characterize the features of diamond grinding wheel.•The algorithm is based on 6-neighbourhood and wolf pruning.•The wolf pruning at 5% produced a proper count of the protruding grains extracted from grinding wheel surface.

The extraction of protruding diamond grains feature from the measured data of grinding wheels is the key to assessing their surface texture and predicting their functional performance. The 3D-motif analysis was utilized to identify the significant features. Based on 6-neighbourhood and wolf pruning, the tiny and insignificant motifs were eliminated and the surface of grinding wheel was segmented into large significant motifs. Four surface samples of #600 diamond grinding wheel were measured by using Alicona Infinite Focus Measuring Instrument and analyzed based on 3D-motif method. As the results shown, the 3D-motif analysis provided an effective method to segment the measured surface into significant features. The experiments also indicated that wolf pruning at 5% produced a proper count of the protruding grains extracted from grinding wheel surface.