P. Fomitchov et al., ADVANCED IMAGE-PROCESSING TECHNIQUES FOR AUTOMATIC NONDESTRUCTIVE EVALUATION OF ADHESIVELY-BONDED STRUCTURES USING SPECKLE INTERFEROMETRY, Journal of nondestructive evaluation, 16(4), 1997, pp. 215-227
In conventional optical nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of structures
using shearography or electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI)
, results are typically provided in the form of fringe patterns or def
ormation contour plots. However, in order to fully automate the proces
s of defect detection, it is desirable to obtain simpler results which
are easier to interpret. We present here one such optical system base
d on additive-subtractive shearography/ESPI. This system processes add
itive-subtractive fringe patterns and provides the sizes and locations
of defects such as disbonds in adhesively-bonded composite structures
. This is achieved by exciting the structure under inspection using an
acoustic stressing mechanism which sweeps a range of vibration freque
ncies of the structure. Since the defective areas of the structure hav
e different mechanical properties from their neighboring regions, vary
ing and complex fringe patterns are obtained at different stressing fr
equencies. We propose an algorithm which enables the automatic identif
ication and selection of relevant additive-subtractive fringe patterns
that pertain only to localized deformations associated with defects,
and which excludes images that pertain to any overall modes of the ent
ire structure. The algorithm also includes a pixel-by-pixel adjustable
thresholding scheme which compensates for intensity variations due to
nonuniform reflectivity from unpainted and dirty test objects. Morpho
logical processing is then performed to extract the shapes of the defe
ct from the processed fringe clusters. Various structures, from simple
aluminum specimens with simulated defects to a complex honeycomb-base
d aviation repair patch specimen, have been successfully evaluated usi
ng this system.