Home | Research | Publications | People | Education | Job Openings | Contact |
Microcrack Assessment on Reactor Internal Components of Nuclear Power Plants
Ageing power facilities are increasingly susceptible to the onset of damage related to long exposure to stress, radiation, elevated temperatures and environmental conditions. One failure mechanism of particular concern is the onset of stress corrosion cracking. Currently, a technician manually measures the crack thicknesses at few points along a microcrack in a microscopic image, and the results are quantified by the Root Mean Square (RMS) of these measurements. In this study, a vision-based methodology is proposed for accurate quantification of microcracks that provides the thickness measurements for each pixel along the crack centreline and provides more comprehensive insight regarding the condition of a microcrack. A region-growing method is used for segmenting microcracks from complex backgrounds. The microcrack thicknesses are then automatically computed along the lines orthogonal to the crack centreline. The fast marching method is used to accurately estimate the centreline of microcracks.
Related Publication
Mohammad R. Jahanshahi, Fu-Chen Chen, Chris Joffe and Sami F. Masri, (2016), "Vision-based quantitative assessment of microcracks on reactor internal components of nuclear power plants," Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, in press, DOI: 10.1080/15732479.2016.1231207.
Copyright © 2014-2018 Smart Informatix Laboratory, Purdue University. All rights reserved. |