Inspection Technology Research Articles

Investigation of dry environment construction Equipment's medium displacement system for submarine pipelines

Innovative underwater pipeline repair and inspection technologies utilising a dry chamber represent a novel approach. This technique involves injecting high-pressure air into a chamber to displace the surrounding medium. However, sealing becomes very challenging owing to the irregularity of the sealing surface, and diver operations pose significant risks at high gas pressures. This study presents a novel design that integrates inflation and drainage methods. It employs an air compressor for chamber inflation and submersible pumps, along with an air-operated diaphragm pump for water drainage. This system could effectively manage various degrees of leakage and maintain continuous drainage, thus establishing a normal pressure environment. Consequently, the sealing requirement is significantly reduced, and divers are allowed to perform multiple tasks within the chamber at atmospheric pressure. Furthermore, the inflation parameters were optimized during the inflation and drainage processes through a numerical method, and the designed system was validated via offshore experiments. The results indicated that the system could handle a leakage rate of 50 m3/h and maintain a dry chamber for at least 5 h.

Optical functionality simulation through traceable characterization of optical components

The production of high-value components containing functional micro- and submicron-scale features requires the implementation of high-quality in-process inspection technologies to guarantee zero-defect manufacturing, boosting the transition to digital manufacturing. In the present study, the impact of the measurement uncertainty assigned to surface micro- and submicron-structures on the optical performance of a one-dimensional diffraction grating was determined. Thus, 3D confocal microscopy was selected as an inspection technology, introducing measuring data and uncertainty values on an optical simulation model to evaluate the influence of those magnitudes on the irradiance profile of a light beam at a target plane after passing through the diffraction grating. To achieve this goal, the calibrated areal standards have been used in addition to good practice guides for instrument calibration combined with optical modeling to simulate the functional behavior of the optical device. Results proved that changes of hundreds of nanometers in the lateral dimensions of the grating profile lead to drastic deviations in the irradiance profile and, thus, deviation in the optical performance. Hence a change in the period and the structure width of the step grating to the limits of the calculated uncertainty (Nominal Period ± ux,y) supposes a change of down to a 50 % of decrease in the maximum peak of the irradiance profile detected. Thanks to these results, it is possible to define a range in the grating device's performance depending on the dimensional surface characterization and its uncertainty. Moreover, an in-situ measurement approach has been designed for further product quality control.

Application of gel based on medical image inspection in total closure resection of oral cancer patients

Oral cancer is a common malignant tumor, and total closed resection is a common treatment. However, it has always been a challenge to determine the exact extent of excision during surgery. The application of medical image examination in surgery can provide important reference information, but the current methods still have some limitations. This study explored the application of gels based on medical image examination in the total closed resection of oral cancer patients to improve the accuracy of resection range and surgical treatment effect. The study collected medical image data of patients with oral cancer for image enhancement and determination of resection boundaries. By comparing the results of the experimental group and the control group, the application effect of gel in operation was evaluated. Through the application of medical image inspection technology, the determination of surgical resection boundary is more accurate, and the positive incisal margin of patients is effectively avoided. Gel technology improves the success rate and efficacy of surgery, and this method helps to improve the accuracy of surgery and the certainty of the scope of resection, which is of great significance for improving the surgical treatment effect and the survival rate of patients.

Optimal maintenance over a finite time horizon for a system under imperfect inspection and dynamic working environment

Inspections play a crucial role in determining the state of a system and informing timely maintenance decisions. However, due to the limitations of adopted inspection technologies, inspection errors are often inevitable. More importantly, the likelihood of such errors is often influenced by the system's working environment that varies over time and space. Despite this, most studies on imperfect inspections largely overlook the effects of such dynamic working environments on inspection errors. To address this gap, this paper proposes a maintenance policy accounting for imperfect inspections for a degrading system with hidden failures under a dynamic working environment. We develop two models based on a recursive method. The first model examines a case where the working environment affects only inspection errors, whereas the second one accounts for its impact on both inspection errors and the system's degradation process. Our focus is to determine the optimal interval and number of inspections that minimize the expected maintenance cost over a finite time horizon. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the proposed method to ensure the effectiveness of maintenance actions. The optimization outcomes not only offer a valuable tool for engineers seeking to reduce maintenance costs but also shed light on broader managerial implications.

The Inspection Technology for the Maximum Surface Temperature Test of Coal Mine Explosion-Proof Electrical Equipment

The Inspection Technology for the Maximum Surface Temperature Test of Coal Mine Explosion-Proof Electrical Equipment

Analysis of Bridge Inspection Technology for Highway Reconstruction and Expansion

This article focuses on bridge testing technologies in highway construction and expansion projects. It provides an overview of the inspection process for bridges in highway reconstruction and expansion projects, the main inspections, and strategies for improving the quality of inspections. Relevant units should conduct bridge inspections using appearance inspections, special inspections, and bearing capacity assessments in highway reconstruction and expansion projects. To effectively improve testing quality, relevant units should also focus on establishing and improving testing standards, strengthening material testing, and improving the overall quality of the testing personnel. This research aims to enhance the quality of highway reconstruction and expansion projects by supporting the sensible application of bridge inspection technology.

Transient Tests for Checking the Trieste Subsea Pipeline: Toward Field Tests

Subsea pipelines are vital arteries transporting oil, gas, and water over long distances and play a critical role in the global resource supply chain. However, they are the most vulnerable to damage from both human-made and natural causes and are characterized by inherent inaccessibility. As a result, routine inspection and monitoring technologies, both reliable and at the lowest possible cost, are needed to ensure their longevity. To fill this need, the use of transient-test-based techniques is proposed. In this first paper of a set of two companion papers, attention is focused on the selection of the appropriate maneuver that generates pressure waves and then on the planned steps—i.e., the sequence of actions—functional to the execution of the transient tests in the best flow conditions for effective fault detection. A brief review of the available fault detection technologies with their limitations is also offered. Finally, the performance of the proposed procedure is evaluated mainly in terms of the stability of the pressure regime prior to the execution of the transient test.

Real-time hollow defect detection in tiles using on-device tiny machine learning

This study addresses the challenge of subsurface defect detection in floor tiles for quality control in residential construction. To overcome the limitations of traditional inspection methods and the complexities associated with existing artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches, we have developed the AI diagnostic Stick (AID-Stick), a novel tool designed to advance the field of tile defect detection. This innovative tool integrates an embedded machine-learning framework, leveraging convolutional neural networks and tiny machine learning techniques. The AID-Stick utilizes spectrogram, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient, and Mel filterbank energy for real-time, on-microcontroller unit diagnostics of auditory signals from tile tapping tests. Our methodology effectively utilizes these acoustic features in distinguishing between intact and subsurface hollow defective tiles. The study’s findings, revealing a notable validation accuracy of 97% and a real-world accuracy of 81.25%, showcase a promising improvement over traditional methods. The AID-Stick’s practicality, cost-effectiveness, and user-friendly design make it potentially beneficial for small-to-medium enterprises and economically constrained markets. Furthermore, this research opens avenues for future enhancements in embedded AI systems, with potential applications extending beyond the construction industry to other domains requiring non-destructive testing. This work not only contributes to the field of industrial quality control but also to the development of intelligent diagnostic tools, paving the way for future innovations in automated inspection technologies.

RHiREM: Intelligent diagnostic framework for pipeline Eddy Current Internal Inspection based on reinforcement learning with hierarchical reward exploration mechanism

Pipeline safety is of paramount importance for socio-economic development, necessitating regular inspection and maintenance. The complexity of the internal pipeline environment and the presence of irregular noise in detection data, however, pose significant challenges to pipeline inspection technologies. Additionally, the reliance on manual expertise for inspection and the absence of standardized assessment criteria further complicate the development of automated inspection methods in this context. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a pipeline anomaly detection framework based on reinforcement learning with hierarchical reward exploration mechanism (RHiREM). It includes two main aspects: Firstly, the hierarchical reward mechanism. By deeply simulating the process of defect recognition based on expert personal experience, the original pipeline data is first adaptively divided into sets of windows with different sizes, and then attribute and type judgments are performed on them. In this way, the approach achieves accurate identification of defects and pipeline structures in scenarios with minimal noise interference. Secondly, the hierarchical exploration mechanism. By leveraging the temporal exploration and spatial exploration, the mechanism enables further deep search and feature learning on complex pipeline signals, and facilitates comprehensive assessment of the relationships between global features and local features across different signals, effectively resolving the difficulties associated with identifying defect signals in the presence of high noise interference. the proposed framework has been demonstrated to automate the detection of complex on-site pipeline internal signals and successfully detected the common anomalies with high F1-score over conventional techniques.

High-robustness autofocusing method in the microscope with laser-based arrayed spots.

Accurate and rapid autofocus technology plays a crucial role in various fields, including automatic optical inspection technology, bio-chips scanning, and semiconductor manufacturing. The current photoelectric autofocus methods have limitations because of detecting the focal plane solely at the center of the microscope field of view. In the application of Stereo-seq the risk of autofocus errors will be increased, which have reduced the robustness of the system, like when the surface of the tested samples are wrinkling and inconsistent thickness, or the detection spot is at the edge of the sample. To enhance the robustness of the autofocus system and mitigate the constraints of the photoelectric autofocus methods, the laser-based arrayed spots photoelectric autofocus method has been proposed. To achieve the uniform light splitting, a 2D-Dammann grating is incorporated into the optical path of the autofocus system, resulting in the formation of an n × n arrayed spots on the surface of the sample. Through experimental verification, it has been demonstrated that this method can achieve the autofocus range of ±100μm and the autofocus accuracy of ±1/4 DOF when applied to a microscope equipped with a 10× objective lens, thereby satisfying the requirements for microscopic focusing. The arrayed light autofocus method devised in this study presents what we believe is a novel research concept for active autofocus detection and holds significant application value.

Analysis of the Application of Bridge Rapid Inspection and Evaluation Technology

Rapid bridge inspection and evaluation mainly uses information technology to test the quality of bridge infrastructure and structures, integrates the test results with the existing management system, completes the bridge status assessment, establishes information management files to provide bridge disease problem inspection and analysis, and provides support for the application of disposal measures. This paper briefly discusses the necessity of applying rapid inspection and evaluation technology and analyzes the bridge’s rapid inspection and evaluation content, inspection system, and application process. We look forward to the future application prospects of this technology and supporting those in this field.

Research on the technology of casing inspection through tubing in the Saertu Development Zone of Daqing Oilfield

With the further development of Daqing Oilfield, the occurrence of widespread casing damage in the Saertu Development Area has been on the rise annually.In order to promptly prevent, detect and address casing damage, the management departments of the oil extraction plants must schedule regular casing inspection operations. This approach not only raises production costs but also prolongs the well shutdown period, further impacting crude oil output.This article focuses on the technical needs of oilfield development and has developed tubing and casing detection technology, the radial magnetic scanning system is integrated with the sixteen arm wellbore diameter, the synchronous tubing and casing inspection instrument represents the latest in concurrent inspection technology, developed specifically for the technical demands of oilfield development Without displacing the tubing column, it simultaneously captures data on tubing inner diameter, tubing continuity, the extent of casing damage via magnetic scanning, and continuous 3D imaging of the tubing at standard inspection speeds, the workload of checking and matching tasks were significantly reduced. Between 2022 and 2023, the through-tubing casing inspection technology was utilized in 525 wells, with 356 wells verified by mobilizing the tubing column, achieving a predictive accuracy of 87.6% and generating economic benefits of 69.6 million yuan.

Exploration of Visual Inspection and Algorithm Technology for Aerial Transmission Lines

Exploration of Visual Inspection and Algorithm Technology for Aerial Transmission Lines

Progress in Research on Tobacco Online Inspection Technology Based on Machine Vision

Progress in Research on Tobacco Online Inspection Technology Based on Machine Vision

Development of Digital Hammering Inspection Technology to Evaluate the Fixed Condition of Steel Plate Embedded in Concrete

Development of Digital Hammering Inspection Technology to Evaluate the Fixed Condition of Steel Plate Embedded in Concrete

The Current Status and Development Trends of Bridge Inspection Technology in Bridge Inspection and Evaluation

The Current Status and Development Trends of Bridge Inspection Technology in Bridge Inspection and Evaluation

Hypernetwork-Based Physics-Driven Personalized Federated Learning for CT Imaging.

In clinical practice, computed tomography (CT) is an important noninvasive inspection technology to provide patients' anatomical information. However, its potential radiation risk is an unavoidable problem that raises people's concerns. Recently, deep learning (DL)-based methods have achieved promising results in CT reconstruction, but these methods usually require the centralized collection of large amounts of data for training from specific scanning protocols, which leads to serious domain shift and privacy concerns. To relieve these problems, in this article, we propose a hypernetwork-based physics-driven personalized federated learning method (HyperFed) for CT imaging. The basic assumption of the proposed HyperFed is that the optimization problem for each domain can be divided into two subproblems: local data adaption and global CT imaging problems, which are implemented by an institution-specific physics-driven hypernetwork and a global-sharing imaging network, respectively. Learning stable and effective invariant features from different data distributions is the main purpose of global-sharing imaging network. Inspired by the physical process of CT imaging, we carefully design physics-driven hypernetwork for each domain to obtain hyperparameters from specific physical scanning protocol to condition the global-sharing imaging network, so that we can achieve personalized local CT reconstruction. Experiments show that HyperFed achieves competitive performance in comparison with several other state-of-the-art methods. It is believed as a promising direction to improve CT imaging quality and personalize the needs of different institutions or scanners without data sharing. Related codes have been released at https://github.com/Zi-YuanYang/HyperFed.

Performance Analysis and Related Data Utilization of Rapid Crack Inspection Technology for Railway Tunnel Lining Surface

Performance Analysis and Related Data Utilization of Rapid Crack Inspection Technology for Railway Tunnel Lining Surface

Deterioration Damage in Tubes of Shell-and-tube Heat Exchangers and Non-destructive Inspection Technology to Detect it

Deterioration Damage in Tubes of Shell-and-tube Heat Exchangers and Non-destructive Inspection Technology to Detect it

Utilization of a Wall Climbing Robot for Inspection Technology

Utilization of a Wall Climbing Robot for Inspection Technology