Novel SFS-NDT in the field of defect detection

NDT plays a crucial role in everyday life and is necessary to assure safety and reliability. NDT applied to surface detection as far as possible should be a non-contacting technique operating easily with low inspection costs and a high accuracy, human beings as inspectors as well as the environment should not be harmed. A novel NDT based on Shape From Shading (SFS) is introduced in this paper. SFS is a prospecting 3D recovery method because it recovers 3D shape of work piece only from one image. We firstly use SFS in the field of 3D surface defect detection, which is an effective way to guarantee the product quality. Compared with other defect detection method, this SFS method only needs CCD, optical system, image-collection card and computer. It has the merits such as low cost, easy operation, non-contact, non-destructive, no harming to people, and it is 3D overall shape detection. SFS-NDT has been used in the online defect detection measurement of TianJin SanHuan new material Ltd in Chinese Academy of Science. The 3D shape recovery method and application in the field of defect detection are presented. The precision of 3D recovery is analyzed. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.