Automated segmentation of ultrasonic volumetric data of composite materials

Manual ultrasonic testing is frequently applied to inspect the quality of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer composites(CFRP), especially in the aerospace industry. There is an immediate requirement to replace manual ultrasonic testing anddata evaluation with an automated system. A part of the solution is provided via automated acquisition of ultrasounddata. The second part to be solved is the analysis of the enormous amount of data generated. The objective of thiscontribution is to propose a method that can provide an automated interpretation of data. The proposed method istested on two CFRP samples with artificial defects of different sizes, depths and shapes.