Cylinder Diameter Measurement for Rail Tankers Using 3D Laser Scanning Technology

Rail tankers are the main tools of transport for liquid goods and represent a measuring instrument for trade settlement. The cylinder diameter of rail tankers must be measured for process quality control and to calculate the volume. In this paper, an automated system for non-tactile diameter measurements is presented. This study aims to improve the working efficiency and reduce the artificial labor intensity of such measurements. Therefore, a 3D laser scanner is selected and combined with a computing system. The scanner collects many points along with the coordinate information, and these points constitute the point cloud and accurately reflect the tanker shape. Then, the computing system processes the point cloud by establishing a digital model, calculating the fitting initial values, fitting the curved surface, etc., and it then displays the diameter value in a 3D diagram. To verify the performance of this method, the results are compared with those of the artificial method.