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Defect detection in partially complete SAW and TIG welds

using on-line radioscopy and image processing


G. Bonser and S. W. Lawson
Mechatronic Systems and Robotics Research Group,
School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering,
University of Surrey,
Guildford, Surrey, GU2 5XH, United Kingdom.
ABSTRACT
An application of machine vision applied to the analysis of radioscopic images of incomplete weld geometries
is described. The rationale of the work is to identify weld defects as soon as they are produced, thereby reducing
the costs of any subsequent repairs. Existing methods of weld and defect identification are compared, leading to
the development of filtering and 'window' based variance operator for segmentation of suspect defect areas
inside the weld region is described.
The software and radioscopic imaging system have been benchmarked through a series of demonstration trials
on both 80mm thick carbon steel submerged arc welded (SAW) testpieces, and 25mm thick carbon steel tungsten
inert gas (TIG) welded testpieces. The range of intentionally implanted defects, from root cracks to lack of side
wall fusion, were detected with an overall accuracy of 87%, and classified in terms of defect size, shape, and
position within the weld region.
Keywords: Radioscopy, NDT, image segmentation, incomplete welds, x-ray, defect detection, defect
classification.
1. INTRODUCTION
The introduction of digital imaging has brought about a wide range of improvements to radiographic non
destructive testing (NDT). These advances include calibration of sensor wear, assisted operator interpretation
using image enhancement, and cost effective digital image archiving. Image integration methods are now
routinely used in practice to remove image noise, whilst simple edge enhancements and grey level look up
tables can also be used to aid defect detection in poor contrast images. In addition, to these image enhancement
techniques a number of researchers have addressed the possibilities of semi, or even fully, automated inspection
using image analysis and pattern recognition techniques.
The work described here has been based on a recent European Commission (EC) funded project entitled NDT
Methods for Flaw Detection During Welding which has been directed at the development and evaluation of
techniques for the detection of defects during the welding process. The problems associated with undertaking
NDT during welding include high temperatures (which can affect SNR and other data acquisition parameters),
incomplete weld geometries and large local electro-magnetic fields. In addition any defect information must be
made available almost immediately so that any errors in the welding parameters can be corrected in an on-line
manner. It is for this latter reason that automated image processing methods have been developed for flaw
detection and evaluation. Work has concentrated on the use of both ultrasonic Time of Flight Diffraction (TOFD)
and x-ray radioscopic methods for flaw detection. The development of image processing for automatic TOFD is
described elsewhere in these proceedings (paper number 3399-24).
Section 2 of this paper describes a filtering approach used to detect flaws in radioscopic images, whilst Section 3
describes the approach adopted for defect characterisation. Section 4 describes the results of automatic defect
detection on images generated in the final demonstration trials of the EC funded project. Overall defect detection
rates are given in Section 5, along with general conclusions to the work.
2. IMAGE PROCESSING FOR DEFECT DETECTION
Defects are characterised in a radiographic picture by local changes in x-ray collection density which translate
to transitions in grey level pixel intensity, although the magnitude of such changes may vary greatly from defect
to defect, as is illustrated in Figure 1. The figure shows an example radioscopic image of a weld containing three
cracks - none of which are immediately visible from the original grey level picture. When the contrast of the
image is enhanced using histogram equalisation (Sonka, Hlavac and Boyle, 1993) the cracks become visible to
the human eye - however the central crack has a mean grey level very close to the background value. It is the
goal of defect detection operators to locate such changes, whether slight or severe, and to label defect pixels
accordingly.
A B
crack
1
crack
2
crack
3
crack
1
crack
2
crack
3
163
197
grey
level
A B
(a) (b) (c)
Figure 1: Variation of defect intensities in radioscopic images. (a) raw image of weld with three vertical cracks, varying in
severity. (b) histogram equalised version of (a) with cracks labelled. (c) intensity profile along line AB in original image,
showing cracks 1 and 2 have large deflections from the background whilst crack 2 is virtually indistinguishable from
background noise. Note that an automatic defect detection scheme would be required to locate all three cracks.
One of the fastest and most powerful local area techniques is a convolution, using a one or two dimensional
kernel and standard convolution 'filters', such as edge accentuators and high pass operators, are already used
in practice as aids to defect detection by human operators. However, no single filter is suited to the automatic
detection of all different flaw types, since variations in defect shape, grey level intensity, edge attributes,
orientation, and position in the component make it very difficult to produce a generic defect model. Both Inoue
and Sakai (1985) and Wallingford et al (1992) describe the use of matched filters for flaw enhancement and
detection in weld and simulated images respectively. The method is based on the optimisation of signal to noise
ratios (SNR's) given the expected two dimensional signature of a particular flaw. The technique may be
implemented as a convolution operator and therefore can easily be applied at real time speeds. However the
results presented show that although the technique can be used to locate almost invisible flaws from noisy
backgrounds, further processing is required to accurately segment the defect region. Furthermore the technique
relies on the use of different filters for each flaw shape and orientation that may occur.
It may be desirable, on the other hand, to have a limited number of filters, each geared to detect a particular
group of defects, whose outputs may be optimally combined to produce the correct segmentation. A method has
been developed (Lawson, 1996) which uses two filters as a pre-processing stage for defect detection in
radioscopic images of welds. Two specific filter masks were chosen from a number of standard filters by
experimental means rather than through formal or iterative methods. The filters used are the Laws "E5S5" (a
combination of Laws' spot, E5, and edge, S5, one dimensional detector masks) and the horizontal Kirsch filter.
The integer coefficients of the (5x5) variations of these filters are given in Figure 2. The Laws mask, was selected
for its ability to accentuate 'spot' or 'blob' type defects (such as porosities and cavities) and the Kirsch filter since
it was more suited to highlighting longitudinal defect types (such as cracks, lack of penetration and slag
inclusions), and was therefore complementary in performance.
1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 0
-1 -1 -1 -1 -1
2
4
0
-4
-1
-2
0
2
1
0
0
0
0
0
-2
0
0
0
0
0
-1
-2
0
2
1
(a) (b)
-1 -1 -1 -1 -1
Figure 2: 5x5 filter masks for defect detection in radioscopic images
(a) Laws E5S5 filter; (b) horizontal Kirsch filter.
These two masks may be applied, separately, as local linear property extractors to every pixel f(x,y) in an image
to yield a new pixel value f'(x,y) given by :-
f'(x,y) =

M(k ,l ) . f(x, y)
k ,l = N/ 2
N/ 2

... Equ. (1)


where M is the convolution mask, or
f'(x,y) =
m,n= N/ 2
N/ 2

{f
mn
}
xy
. {M
mn
} ... Equ. (2)
where the set {M
mn
}is the coefficients of the convolution mask M, and {f
mn
}
xy
is the set of members of grey
level values contained in the local population within the rectangular (N
x
x N
y
) box centered at position (x, y)
within the image, and m =(x -(N
x
/ 2) ... y+(N
x
/ 2)) and n =(y-(N
y
/ 2) ... y +(N
y
/ 2)).
Although the two filters described above will accentuate any defects present in an image they will not actually
segment them from the image background. To achieve this a post-processing method for both radioscopic and
ultrasonic TOFD data has been developed which is 'tuneable' to the SNR characteristics which are present in
the NDT data - and therefore the characteristics which are present in a sequence of images acquired at a
particular temperature and with a fixed image intensifier gain setting. The method uses the standard deviation
of a local area population to determine whether or not a pixel is of interest. The standard deviation, , of a local
area population given by :-
=
1
N xN
NxN

n=1
(i
n
- i )
2
... Equ. (3)
where i is the intensity of a pixel,

i

is the mean intensity of the local population and N is the side length of the
square population. The standard deviation, , may then be thresholded to detect areas of high variance (likely to
be defects or component echoes) or low variance (likely to be background). The operator can be applied to
images which have been pre-processed with either the Laws or Kirsch convolution filter.
(a)
T
var1
= 0.05
T
var2
= 0.10
(b)
T
var1
= 0.07
T
var2
= 0.15
(c)
T
var1
= 0.10
T
var2
= 0.20
(d)
T
var1
= 0.20
T
var2
= 0.40
(e)
T
var1
= 0.30
T
var2
= 0.50
Figure 3: Effect of varying thresholds Tvar1 and Tvar2 when applying standard deviation, , operator to image
filtered using Laws kernel. The image contains a cavity type defect.
The effect of using a dual threshold approach to the segmentation of an example radioscopic image is given in
Figure 3 above. The image has been pre-processed with the Laws filter and the local grey scale standard
deviation thresholded at two levels, Tvar1 and Tvar2.
3. DEFECT CHARACTERISATION
Defect characterisation as such is not achieved by the automated defect detection algorithms. Instead pattern
analysis is used to extract a number of features or descriptors from a detected defect. These descriptors are then
used to concisely describe the defect. Ideally this interpretation would produce a complete description of each
defect - including its whereabouts, severity and, most critically, its type. However, in practice this has proven
very difficult to achieve given the complexities and subtleties of the subjective manual inspection procedure
employed by a skilled radiographer. A computerised interpretation is however able to give an objective
description of each defect including its shape, dimensions and location - often these may be combined to give an
indication of the actual defect type.
The procedure adopted extracts six descriptors from a defect detected image denoted d
1
... d
6
, where:-
(d
1
) normalised length/ width.
(d
2
) elongation (perimeter*perimeter/ area).
(d
3
) mean grey scale value of defective area (extracted from raw image).
(d
4
) mean grey scale value of defect/ mean grey scale value of weld area.
(d
5
) normalised Euclidean distance from weld edge.
(d
6
) extent of defect (area).
Each defect in a defect detected image may analysed in such a way as to produce a feature vector of the six
descriptors. Defects are labelled 1-N in the defect detected image using a blob colouring technique (Ballard &
Brown, 1980). An example result of the characterisation is shown in Figure 4.
DEFECT 'E' in 25% SAW weld
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Number of defects to be classified = 1
*******************************************************
Defect(1)
length: 87
width: 12
len/wid: 7.2500
area: 741
coords: 273,47
perim/area 57.2686
meangrey: 209
rel grey: 0.9766
centrity: 0.0404
class: large, longitudinal, air defect
location: at weld centre
*******************************************************
Figure 4: Example of defect analysis in a SAW testpiece.
Note that any defect with a density less than that of the surrounding weld (determined by descriptor d
4
) is
labelled as an 'air' defect. The slag defect in the example shown is hence described as large and longitudinal, of
low density and positioned at the centre of the weld - this description could easily also be of a root crack or a
lack of penetration. Hence in this case the description cannot exactly classify the defect type.
4. RESULTS OF THE DEMONSTRATION TRIALS
During the final demonstration trials three TIG testpieces (TIG A-R, TIG B-R, & TIG C-R) and two SAW
testpieces (SAW A-R & SAW C-R) were fabricated with intentionally placed defects. Break up of the intentional
defects plus additional unintended defects produced slightly different and extra defects. The radioscopic
information was gathered on-line at approximately 25, 50, 85 and 100% weld completion for the TIG testpieces,
whilst at only 18 and 31% completion of the SAW testpieces due to the small power of the available x-ray
source. The testpieces were analysed using conventional NDT methods (both radiographic and ultrasonic)
against which the effectiveness of the automated radioscopic defect detection algorithms have been adjudged.
The ITS Gammascope system
For the duration of the project the partner responsible for the radioscopic data acquisition, Isotopen Technik Dr.
Sauerwein (ITS), have used a single data acquisition device to capture digital radioscopic images for subsequent
processing. This is the Gammascope device which is a fully integrated real time radiography system with
interfaces between the x-ray set and the component manipulator all being controlled by a DEC host computer.
The system also features digital image processing capabilities, including real time image integration. The
images generated by the Gammascope are of size 512x512 by 8 bits and cover approximately 100mm of weld.
The ITS system acquires images at normal video frame-rate but performs frame averaging by an integration
process to reduce noise effects. The integration operation requires that the radioscopy device must remain
stationary relative to the weld for 5 seconds whilst gathering a single image.
After acquisition each image was processed by the automated algorithms described above to locate any defects.
The effectiveness of the automatic defect identification process has been measured using the rating system
shown in Table 1 for both the visibility of the defect and the level of associated false alarms. The full
effectiveness of the algorithms was quantified by a comparison using full destructive testing of the testpieces,
which was performed by the Institut de Soudure (the French Welding Institute).
rating

1

2

3

4

5
visibilty of defect
false alarm level
detected well
detected but distorted
and/or fragmented
only partially detected
but visible
very poorly
detected/obscured by noise
not detected
none
very few isolated or
insignificant pixels
significant false alarms
high level of false alarms
obscuring defects
unacceptably high
Table 1: Automatic defect detection and false alarm ratings used in the assessment of the radioscopic images.
For each of the radioscopic images, an indication of the success of the automatic defect detection for each defect
in the image on a scale of 1-5 was generated, as per Table (1) above. In addition a further figure was given (also
summarised in Table 1) stating an indication of the level of false alarms detected by the algorithms.
Analysis of the TIG testpieces
The TIG welded testpieces contained a total of 15 defects of 6 types. The defects are abbreviated as follows:
LOFS - lack of side-wall fusion RC - root crack
P - porosity LOP - lack of penetration
W - weld inclusion LOIRF - lack of inter-run fusion.
Three sets of 1m long testpieces were manufactured, denoted sample TIG A-R, TIG B-R, and TIG C-R. Defects
were intentionally positioned along the length of each weld at various stages of weld completion. Ultrasonic
TOFD was performed at approx.: 10, 21, 46, 85 and 100% weld completion.
From the conventional NDT of the welds it was summarised that the defects present in the TIG testpieces were
of the intended type and in the correct location. However, extra unintentional defects were also present and the
conventional pulse echo ultrasonics fails to detect several defects (detected by radiography).
Figure 5 shows the results of the automated signal processing software for the detection of defects in the TIG
welded testpieces.
TIG C
Auto
4
6
%
8
5
%
1
0
0
%
LOFS
Root crack
Clustered porosity
Root crack + LOP
LOFS + porosity
LOF + porosity
Weld inclusions
TIG A TIG B
Auto Auto
Weld inclusions
LOFS
Weld inclusions
Porosity
LOIRF
LOP
0%
85%
0%
46%
46%
2
1
%
4
6
%
8
5
%
1
0
0
%
0%
-
l
e
v
e
l
2
1
%
2
1
%
4
6
%
8
5
%
1
0
0
%
l
e
v
e
l
l
e
v
e
l
85%
85%
0%
46%
0%
-
-
-
0%
46%
85%
0%
46%
Figure 5: The results of the radioscopic signal processing software on the TIG images.
For the TIG testpieces the signal processing software identified the majority of defects except for root cracks and
very small unintentional weld inclusions.
Analysis of the SAW testpieces
The SA welded testpieces were meant to contain a total of 15 defects of 6 types. The defects are abbreviated as
follows:
LOFS - lack of side-wall fusion RC - root crack
P - porosity LOI - lack of root (inter-run) fusion
SI - slag inclusion LOIRF - lack of inter-run fusion.
Two sets of 1m long testpieces were manufactured, SAW A-R and SAW C-R. Defects were intentionally
positioned along the length of each weld at various stages of weld completion. Radioscopy was performed at
various stages of completion for each testpiece, at: 18 and 31% weld completion.
From the manual conventional NDT of the welds it can be summarised that the defects present in the SAW
testpieces are of the intentioned type and were at the intended location. However, extra unintentional defects
were again present and conventional ultrasonic testing failed to detect several defects (detected by radiography).
Figure 6 shows the results of the automated signal processing software for the detection of defects in the SAW
welded testpieces.
LOFS
Root crack
Clustered porosity
Root crack + LOP
LOFS + porosity
LOF + porosity
Slag inclusions
SAW A SAW C
Auto Auto
Weld inclusions
LOFS
Weld inclusions
Porosity
LOIRF
LOP
18%
0%
0%
18%
1
8
%
3
1
%
18%
l
e
v
e
l
l
e
v
e
l
1
8
%
3
1
%
18%
10%
10%
0%
25%
25%
Figure 6: The results of the radioscopic signal processing software on the SAW images.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The detection of false alarms, i.e. the automated detection of a defect which is in fact not present was found to be
quite low, typically with a few very small isolated groups of pixels which could be ignored due to their small
size. The worst results were produced on the lower levels of completion for the TIG welds where the
pronounced rippling of the surface of the weld could produce marked contrasts on the radioscopic image. The
defects which were not automatically detected were usually very small in area with root cracks proving to be the
most difficult flaw to detect.
Figures 7 shows the overall effectiveness of the radioscopic signal processing for defect detection for both TIG
and SAW testpieces.
Percentage
completion
21%
46%
85%
100%
N
o

o
f

d
e
f
e
c
t
s

d
e
t
e
c
t
e
d

m
a
n
u
a
l
l
y
18
24
27
24
N
o

o
f

d
e
f
e
c
t
s

d
e
t
e
c
t
e
d

a
u
t
o
m
a
t
i
c
a
l
l
y
16
21
22
91
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

d
e
t
e
c
t
e
d


a
u
t
o
m
a
t
i
c
a
l
l
y
88%
87%
81%
91%
N
o

o
f

d
e
f
e
c
t
s

d
e
t
e
c
t
e
d

m
a
n
u
a
l
l
y
16
15
N
o

o
f

d
e
f
e
c
t
s

d
e
t
e
c
t
e
d

a
u
t
o
m
a
t
i
c
a
l
l
y
14
13
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

d
e
t
e
c
t
e
d


a
u
t
o
m
a
t
i
c
a
l
l
y
87%
86%
Percentage
completion
18%
31%
(a) (b)
Figure 7: Overall effectiveness on (a) TIG radioscopic images, (b) SAW radioscopic images.
The high degree of success that has been achieved demonstrates that on-line weld inspection is possible for
incomplete weld geometries.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the funding of this work by the Commission of the European Communities
under the BRITE-EURAM II (Industrial Materials and Technologies) shared cost project scheme (project number
BRE2-0319). In addition the authors wish to thank the partners of the project, the Institut de Soudure, Nordon
and CIE, Isotopen Technik Dr Sauerwein GmbH, and Mitsui-Babcock Energy Ltd.
7. REFERENCES
Wallingford, R.M., Siwek, E.M. and Gray, J.N., "Application of two-dimensional matched filters to x-ray
radiographic flaw detection and enhancement", Review of Progress in Quantative Non-destructive
Evaluation vol. 11; eds. D.O. Thomson and D.E. Chimenti, Plenum, New York, 1992, pp. 879-886.
Sonka, M., Hlavac, V., and Boyle, R., Image Processing, Analysis and Machine Vision, Pibl. By Chapman and
Hall, London, 1993.
Lawson, S.W., Automatic Defect Detection in Industrial Radioscopic and Ultrasonic Images, Ph.D. Thesis,
University of Surrey, April, 1996.
Inoue, K. and Sakai, M., Automation of inspection for weld, Trans. Of Japanese Welding Research Institute,
Osaka University, vol. 14(1), pp. 35-44, 1985.
Ballard, D.H. and Brown, C.M., Computer Vision, Publ. By Prentice-Hall, 1982.
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1
Further author information:
G. Bonser. Email: g.bonser@surrey.ac.uk; Tel: ++44 1483-259681.
S. Lawson. Email: s.lawson@surrey.ac.uk; Tel: ++44 1483-259681.
Web site: http:/ / robots.surrey.ac.uk/ Activities/ NDT/ ndt.html

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