Ultrasonic C-Scan Image Processing Using Multilevel Thresholding for Damage Evaluation in Aircraft Vertical Stabilizer

Following the “on condition maintenance” approach used for extending service life of an aircraft one of the major tasks is a nondestructive testing of its critical elements. Considering that many of elements of operated aircraft are manufactured from polymeric composites a special attention should be paid for diagnosing these elements due to their high vulnerability to barely visible impact damage. One of the primary testing techniques used for inspection of aircraft composite elements is an ultrasonic C-Scan technique which application results in planar images of emitted/received wave attenuation and a time of flight map. Due to the complex nature of barely visible impact damage occurrence it is difficult to analyze resulting C-Scan images. Therefore, using assistance based on image processing may help with ”big–data” analysis of collected images. In this paper the authors proposed the image processing algorithm for semiautomatic evaluation of such damage distribution in aircraft composite structures. The algorithm is based on multilevel Otsu thresholding and morphological processing. Using the proposed algorithm an extraction of damage visualization from a C-Scan image as well as its characterization and 3D representation is possible. The developed approach will allow supporting diagnosing of composite structures with impact damage using C-Scan technique.