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In the aerospace industry, reliability of non-destructive inspection (NDI) has significant economic and safety implications. It is commonly determined using expensive and extensive empirical probability of detection (POD) studies. Model-assisted qualification is increasingly used to establish the reliability of NDI systems. This approach has the potential to reduce time, costs and resources associated with fully empirical reliability studies, especially in the case where sufficient practical evidence is available. This work is a validation attempt of model-assisted qualification for bolt-hole eddy current inspections. It uses the length and depth of real fatigue cracks as characteristic input parameters in physics-based simulations, along with a number of uncertain variables, corresponding to inspection inconsistencies encountered in practice. Semi-analytical models and parametric studies are employed to replicate a large set of inspection conditions. The corresponding inspection outcomes are used to generate POD curves. Simulation-based POD outputs are compared with the ones obtained experimentally, during an earlier study.
Mandache et al. (Thu,) studied this question.