PV-CrackNet Architecture for Filter Induced Augmentation and Micro-Cracks Detection within a Photovoltaic Manufacturing Facility

Muhammad Hussain, Hussain Al-Aqrabi () and Richard Hill
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Muhammad Hussain: Department of Computer Science, Centre for Industrial Analytics, School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK
Hussain Al-Aqrabi: Department of Computer Science, Centre for Industrial Analytics, School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK
Richard Hill: Department of Computer Science, Centre for Industrial Analytics, School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 22, 1-16

Abstract: Photovoltaic cell manufacturing is a rigorous process involving many stages where the cell surface is exposed to external pressure and temperature differentials. This provides fertile ground for micro-cracks to develop on the cell surface. At present, domain experts carry out a manual inspection of the cell surface to judge if any micro-cracks are present. This research looks to overcome the issue of cell data scarcity through the proposed filter-induced augmentations, thus providing developers with an effective, cost-free mechanism for generating representative data samples. Due to the abstract nature of the cell surfaces, the proposed augmentation strategy is effective in generating representative samples for better generalization. Furthermore, a custom architecture is developed that is computationally lightweight compared to state-of-the-art architectures, containing only 7.01 million learnable parameters while achieving an F1-score of 97%.

Keywords: defect detection; micro-cracks; photovoltaics; smart manufacturing; quality inspection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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