[3A2] A framework for assessment of mixed ultrasonic inspection and monitoring approaches in corrosion surveillance
Y Zhang and F Cegla
Imperial College London, UK
Corrosion affects numerous engineering structures, leading to their gradual deterioration. Traditionally, ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques have involved either periodic scans of structure surfaces or continuous monitoring at a few selected locations. However, recent innovations in sensor technology and autonomous robotic systems have greatly reduced the costs associated with sensor deployment and reconfiguration. These advancements allow for a hybrid approach that enhances both spatial and temporal monitoring capabilities. The effectiveness of this new approach, however, requires thorough validation and comparison with established methodologies. This presentation introduces a generic framework that includes three critical steps for defining and evaluating NDE processes, namely the modelling of 4D (3D spatial and 1D temporal) corrosion progression, the simulation of ultrasonic thickness measurements and the execution of statistical performance evaluations. A metric named the ‘unreliability function’ is employed to evaluate the efficacy of different mixed inspection and monitoring scenarios. This makes it possible to highlight the potential benefits of the proposed hybrid inspection and monitoring approach. In addition, the framework has been packaged as a standalone graphical user interface (GUI), allowing researchers and industrial users to run through the evaluation process on degradation phenomena that are of interest to them.
