Pulsed eddy current and ultrasonic data fusion applied to stress measurement

Stress measurement and its variation are key problems in the operating performance of materials. Stress can affect the material properties and the life of components. There are several destructive and nondestructive techniques that are used to measure stress. However, no single nondestructive testing (NDT) technique or method is satisfactory to fully assess stress. This paper presents an NDT data fusion method to improve stress measurement. An aluminum alloy 2024 specimen subjected to stress simulation is nondestructively inspected using pulsed eddy current and ultrasonic techniques. Following these nondestructive examinations, the information gathered from these two NDT methods has been fused using a suitable fuzzy combination operator. The results obtained with these processes are presented in this paper and their efficiency is discussed. It is shown that the fusion of NDT data with a suitable fuzzy operator can be adequate to improve the reliability of stress measurements. (paper)