• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.19-34
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• 2015

One of the main causes of a limited use of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technologies in bridge deck assessment is the speed of data collection and analysis. The paper describes development and implementation of the RABIT (Robotics Assisted Bridge Inspection Tool) for data collection using multiple NDE technologies. The system is designed to characterize three most common deterioration types in concrete bridge decks: rebar corrosion, delamination, and concrete degradation. It implements four NDE technologies: electrical resistivity (ER), impact echo (IE), ground-penetrating radar (GPR), and ultrasonic surface waves (USW) method. The technologies are used in a complementary way to enhance the interpretation. In addition, the system utilizes advanced vision to complement traditional visual inspection. Finally, the RABIT collects data at a significantly higher speed than it is done using traditional NDE equipment. The robotic system is complemented by an advanced data interpretation. The associated platform for the enhanced interpretation of condition assessment in concrete bridge decks utilizes data integration, fusion, and deterioration and defect visualization. This paper concentrates on the validation and field implementation of two NDE technologies. The first one is IE used in the delamination detection and characterization, while the second one is the USW method used in the assessment of concrete quality. The validation of performance of the two methods was conducted on a 9 m long and 3.6 m wide fabricated bridge structure with numerous artificial defects embedded in the deck.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.195-201
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• 2016

Eddy current testing (ECT) is commonly applied for the inspection of automated production lines of metallic products, because it has a high inspection speed and a reasonable price. When ECT is applied for the inspection of a metallic object having an uneven target surface, such as the spline gear of a spline shaft, it is difficult to distinguish between the original signal obtained from the sensor and the signal generated by a defect because of the relatively large surface signals having similar frequency distributions. To facilitate the detection of defect signals from the spline gear, implementation of high-order filters is essential, so that the fault signals can be distinguished from the surrounding noise signals, and simultaneously, the pass-band of the filter can be adjusted according to the status of each production line and the object to be inspected. We will examine the infinite impulse filters (IIR filters) available for implementing an advanced filter for ECT, and attempt to detect the flaw signals through optimization of system design parameters for detecting the signals at the system level.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.211-219
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• 2006

The UET(ultrasound excited thermography) for the ,eat-time diagnostics of the object employs an infrared camera to image defects of the surface and subsurface which are locally heated using high-frequency putted ultrasonic excitation. The dissipation of high-power ultrasonic energy around the feces of the defects causes an increase In temperature. The defect's image appears as a hot spot (bright IR source) within a dark background field. The UET for nondestructive diagnostic and evaluation is based on the image analysis of the hot spot as a local response to ultrasonic excited heat deposition. In this paper the applicability of VET for fast imaging of defect is described. The ultrasonic energy is injected into the sample through a transducer in the vertical and horizontal directions respectively. The voltage applied to the transducer is measured by digital oscilloscope, and the waveform are compared. Measurements were performed on four kinds of materials: SUS fatigue crack specimen(thickness 14mm), PCB plate(1.8 mm), CFRP plate(3 mm) and Inconel 600 plate (1 mm). A high power ultrasonic energy with pulse durations of 250ms Is injected into the samples in the horizontal and vertical directions respectively The obtained experimental result reveals that the dissipation loss of the ultrasonic energy In the vertical injection is less than that in the horizontal direction. In the cafe or PCB, CFRP, the size of hot spot in the vortical injection if larger than that in horizontal direction. Duration time of the hot spot in the vertical direction is three times as long as that in the horizontal direction. In the case of Inconel 600 plate and SUS sample, the hot spot in the horizontal injection was detected faster than that in the vertical direction

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.183-190
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose an improved anisotropic diffusion model for micro-crack detection in heterogeneously textured surface of polycrystalline solar wafers. Due to the nature of the image sensor, the gray-level of the diagonal micro-crack is non-uniform. Thus, the conventional algorithms can't fully detect diagonal micro-cracks when the number of iteration is not enough. However, the increasing of the iteration number leads to increase computation time and detects micro-crack thicker than the original micro-crack. In order to overcome this drawback, we use the gradient of north, south, east, and west directions as well as extended directions. To calculate the diffusion coefficients, we compare the gradients of conventional directions and extended directions and apply the larger gradient values to the coefficient function. This is because the proposed method reflects the information of diagonal micro-crack. Comparing to Tsai et al.'s and Ko and Rheem's, the proposed algorithm shows superior efficiency in detecting the diagonal micro-cracks with less iterations in the images of polycrystalline solar wafers. In addition, it also shows that the thickness of segmented micro-crack is similar to the orignal micro-crack.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.162-173
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• 1996

Dry magnetic particle inspection(MPI) was performed to detect the surface defects of steel ingot cast billets. Magnetic properties of several materials were characterized by the measurement of the B-H hysteresis curve. The inspection results were evaluated in terms of the magnetizing current, temperature, and the amount of magnetic particles applied to billets. Magnetic flux leakage near the defect site of interest was measured and compared with the results of calculation by the finite element method in the case of direct magnetizing current. Direct and alternating magnetizing currents for materials were deduced by the comparison of the inspections. Results of the magnetic particle inspection by direct magnetizing current were compared with those of finite element method calculations, which were verified by measuring magnetic leakage flux above the surface and the surface defects of the material. For square rods, due to the geometrical effect, the magnetic flux density at the edges along the length of the rods was about 30% of that at the center of rod face for a sufficiently large direct magnetizing current, while it was about 70% for an alternating magnetizing current. Thus, an alternating magnetizing current generates rather uniform magnetic flux density over the rods, except for the region on the face across about 10 mm from the edge. The attraction of the magnetic particle by the magnetic leakage field was nearly independent of the surface temperature of the billets up to $150^{\circ}C$. However, the temperature should have been limited below $60^{\circ}C$ for an effective fixing of gathered magnetic particles to the billet surface using methylene chloride. We also found that the amount of applied magnetic particles tremendously affected the detection capability.

• Design & Manufacturing
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2020

In general, auto parts production assembly line is assembled and produced by automatic mounting by an automated robot. In such a production site, quality problems such as misalignment of parts (doors, trunks, roofs, etc.) to be assembled with the vehicle body or collision between assembly robots and components are often caused. In order to solve such a problem, the quality of parts is manually inspected by using mechanical jig devices outside the automated production line. Automotive inspection technology is the most commonly used field of vision, which includes surface inspection such as mounting hole spacing and defect detection, body panel dents and bends. It is used for guiding, providing location information to the robot controller to adjust the robot's path to improve process productivity and manufacturing flexibility. The most difficult weighing and measuring technology is to calibrate the surface analysis and position and characteristics between parts by storing images of the part to be measured that enters the camera's field of view mounted on the side or top of the part. The problem of the machine vision device applied to the automobile production line is that the lighting conditions inside the factory are severely changed due to various weather changes such as morning-evening, rainy days and sunny days through the exterior window of the assembly production plant. In addition, since the material of the vehicle body parts is a steel sheet, the reflection of light is very severe, which causes a problem in that the quality of the captured image is greatly changed even with a small light change. In this study, the distance between the car body and the door part and the door are acquired by the measuring device combining the laser slit light source and the LED pattern light source. The result is transferred to the joint robot for assembling parts at the optimum position between parts, and the assembly is done at the optimal position by changing the angle and step.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2005

There are many tube and pipeline in nuclear power plant under high temperature and high pressure. Erosion and corrosion defects were expected on these tube and pipe-line by environmental and mechanical factors. These erosion and corrosion defects ran be evaluated by ultrasonic technique. In these study, Scanning Laser Source(SLS) technique was applied to detect defect and construct image. This technique also makes detection possible on rough and curved surfaces such as tube and pipe-line by scanning. Conventional ultrasonic scanning technique requires immersion of specimen or water jet for transferring ultrasonic wave between transducer and specimen. However, this SLS technique does not need contacting and couplant to generate surface wave and to get flaw images. Therefore, this SLS technique has several advantages, for complicated production inspection, non-contact, remote from specimen, and high resolution. In this study, SLS images were obtained with various conditions of generation laser ultrasound and receiving in order to enhance detectability of flaws on the tube. Stress corrosion cracks were produced on tube and images of stress corrosion cracks were constructed by using SLS technique.