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3D Visualization of Ultrasonic Inspection Data Using Virtual Reality
Research Theme: Visualisation and Virtual Environments
People Involved: Michal Koutek, Frits Post, Joost Bloom (TNO)
Project status: Project available for TU Delft Master students!
Bachelor's project variant available on the request.
Posted May 2008 by Michal Koutek
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Introduction
TNO has developed UMASIS, a finite difference (FD) modeling package for simulation of ultrasonic wave propagation in heterogeneous media. This ultrasonic simulation tool plays an important role in improving the understanding of the signals and optimizing the inspection geometry. Ultrasonic inspection is a method to perform Non Destructive Testing (NDT) and is widely applied in the Oil & Gas, Aerospace, Process Industry and Nuclear industries among others. Transducers are used to emit and receive the ultrasonic waves that propagate through the part under inspection. Defects or discontinuities in the material disturb the wave propagation, resulting in a different signal at the receiver end. These signals are often quite complex and therefore difficult to interpret. Erroneous interpretation leads to false calls or defects being missed.
Description
Current visual analysis at TNO is done by an animation. See the following video's: no_defect, with defect, example UMASIS. The data is a time series of two-dimensional (2D) of the wave amplitudes (thousands of timesteps!). TNO has asked the visualization and VR group whether it would be possible to visualize this 2D+time data in 3D. The initial 3D visualizations of this data at the VRlab have demonstrated that the 3D visualization can show with one 3D image a complete propagation of the wave through the pipe. Interestingly the secondary reflexions appear as branches from the diagonal, which represents main direction of the wave propagation. Because of the large dimensions of the data (cca. [600,5500,x*1000 timesteps] it is rather challenging to provide interactive 3D visualization. The data is spatially sparse which would give a space for compression and real-time decompression of the data. But it will be important not to loose any detail. The visualisation will be based on VR-visualization tools used and developed at the VR-VIS group at the TU Delft.
Your work
The student interested in this project has a choice of performing this work as his/her graduation (MSc.) project including the research assignment.
A shorter Bachelor's project variant is available on request, and it will be focused on implementation of interactive 3D visualization of this data in VR.
Further this project would require some skills and interest for OpenGL, advanced GPU programming, and VR interaction.
The graduation and the research assignment will study general approaches for 3D visualization of 2D+time data, large data handling, efficient compression of sparse data volume and efficient and highly interactive 3D visualization of this type of data including decompression on-the-fly, performing measurements angles, distances, time differences, wave propagation speed, etc.
For the project partner, the TNO, it is important to study the added value of 3D visualization compared to the animation approach. Therefore a number of experimental (simulation) scenarios will be used.
Daily project supervision will be provided by:
- the VR-VIS team of the Computer Graphics Group, Faculty EWI at the TU Delft
and Oil and Gas - Flow Control & Instrumentation Section of the TNO in Delft.
For more information you can contact:
Dr.ir. Michal Koutek, E-Mail: <m.koutek AT ewi.tudelft.nl>
Ir. Joost Bloom, E-Mail: <joost.bloom AT tno.nl>
The project is available for immediate start.
Links
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