Advancing railway track health monitoring: Integrating GPR, InSAR and machine learning for enhanced asset management

Railway track health monitoring and maintenance are crucial stages in railway asset management, aiming to enhance the train operation quality and service life. For this aim, various inspection means (using diverse non-destructive testing techniques) have been applied, however, these means are mostly not able to monitor whole railway track...

Risk-based maintenance and inspection of riverine flood defence systems

The condition of flood defence revetments is influenced by many different degradation processes such as animal burrowing, rutting and growth of weeds. Many of these processes are shock-based rather than progressive continuous. As shocks can cause a drop in performance, this means that the condition of a revetment can suddenly decrease,...

Influence and Detection of Vacuum Bag Leakages in Composites Manufacturing

Composites are increasingly used in the aerospace industry due to their lightweight potential and flexible design options. The most widespread manufacturing process for large components made of fibre composites is still the open mould process. In this process, a composite component is placed on a mould and hermetically sealed with a vacuum bag...

Automated Defect Analysis using Optical Sensing and Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Fibre Layup Processes in Composite Manufacturing

In modern aircraft, structural lightweight composite components are increasingly<br/>used. To manufacture these components in a costeffective way, robust production systems for the manufacturing of complex fibre composite components are necessary. A rather novel but already established process for fibre material deposition is the Automated Fibre...

Real-time UAV routing strategy for monitoring and inspection for post-disaster restoration of distribution networks

Natural disasters pose a tremendous risk to the reliability of distribution networks. In this paper, a novel real-time UAV routing strategy for coordination between monitoring and inspection for post-disaster restoration in distribution networks is proposed. With our proposed real-time UAV routing strategy, damages can be inspected by UAVs...

Extracting structural components of concrete buildings from laser scanning point clouds from construction sites

In construction projects, inspection of structural components mostly relies on classical measurements obtained by measuring tapes, levelling, or total stations. With those methods, only a few points on the structure can be measured, and the resulting inspection may not fully reflect the actual, detailed condition of the complete object. Laser...

Quantitative assessment of structural components for construction management using laser scanning data

Defects in a construction site is inevitable and these defects must be inspected and reported timely to minimize extract cost due to repair the defects. However, in practice, quality of structural elements is often inspected by a site supervisor with traditional tools (e.g. measuring tapes, total stations or levelling) at only specific locations...

Inspection and assessment of corrosion in pretensioned concrete bridge girders exposed to coastal climate

The most common methods for detecting chloride-induced corrosion in concrete bridges are half-cell potential (HCP) mapping, electrical resistivity (ER) measurements, and chloride concentration testing, combined with visual inspection and cover measurements. However, studies on corrosion detection in pretensioned structures are rare. To...

Investigation of Olympus TJF‐Q180V Scopes at UMC Utrecht regarding contamination found after cleaning and disinfection: Reporting, Conclusions and Suggestions

In 2015, a multi-resistant Klebsiella pneumonia bacteria (“MR Klebsiella”) was found in two Olympus video duodenoscopes of the type TJF-Q180V in the Utrecht University Medical Center (“UMC Utrecht”) after the culturing of flush samples (sterile physiological saline), which were sent through the suction and biopsy channels. This report describes...

Challenges for scanning electron microscopy and inspection on the nanometer scale for non-IC application: And how to tackle them using computational techniques

In this paper key challenges posed on metrology by feature dimensions of 20nm and below are discussed. In detail, the need for software-based tools for SEM image acquisition and image analysis in environments where CD-SEMs are not available and/or not flexible enough to cover all inspection tasks is outlined. These environments include...

Aircraft corrosion and fatigue damage assessment

This report reviews currently available information on corrosion and fatigue in aircraft as a background to discussing the assessment of corrosion and fatigue damage. The main topics are: * aircraft operating environments and loads * corrosion * fatigue * corrosion and fatigue * corrosion and fatigue damage assessment. Aircraft structures are...

Ageing aircraft research in The Netherlands

The problems of Ageing Aircraft are worldwide. Hence, actions to overcome or prevent these problems should be taken in international collaboration. The Federal Aviation Administration FAA and the Netherlands Civil Aviation Department RLD have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in the area of structural integrity, with specific reference to...

Damage tolerance of stiffened-skin structures: prediction and experimental verification

Some consequences of application of the current damage tolerance airworthiness requirements for transport aircraft in designing stiffened-skin structures to be safe under all operational load conditions are discussed. Compliance with these requirements may be shown by analysis supported by test evidence. To provide the designer with analytical...

Effect of penetrant on fatigue of aluminium alloy lap joints

The effect of penetrant on the fatigue life of single shear riveted lap joints was investigated by flight simulation fatigue tests using the MINITWIST gust spectrum. The penetrant/material combination investigated was ARDROX 985 P3T and aluminium alloy 202U-T3 sheet material (both bare and clad) respectively. The effect of penetrant on the...

Lasting Friendship: A review of the F-27 fatique evaluation programma carried out by Fokker-VFW

Fokker-VFW is carrying out a completely new fatigue evaluation of the F-2T aircraft, covering lives up to 120000 flights. This evaluation includes; a)A complete inventory of the configuration status of the F-2T fleet, b)An inventory and evaluation of existing test experience, c)Evaluation of service experience, d)Analytical predictions of life...