A novel method based on deep learning algorithms for material deformation rate detection

Given the significant influence of microstructural characteristics on a material’s mechanical, physical, and chemical properties, this study posits that the deformation rate of structural steel S235-JR can be precisely determined by analyzing changes in its microstructure. Utilizing advanced artificial intelligence techniques, microstructure images of S235-JR were systematically analyzed to establish a correlation with the material’s lifespan. The steel was categorized into five classes and subjected to varying deformation rates through laboratory tensile tests. Post-deformation, the specimens underwent metallographic procedures to obtain microstructure images via an light optical microscope (LOM). A dataset comprising 10000 images was introduced and validated using K-Fold cross-validation. This research utilized deep learning (DL) architectures ResNet50, ResNet101, ResNet152, VGG16, and VGG19 through transfer learning to train and classify images containing deformation information. The effectiveness of these models was meticulously compared using a suite of metrics including Accuracy, F1-score, Recall, and Precision to determine their classification success. The classification accuracy was compared across the test data, with ResNet50 achieving the highest accuracy of 98.45%. This study contributes a five-class dataset of labeled images to the literature, offering a new resource for future research in material science and engineering.