AI technology improves critical crack detection in nuclear reactors, bridges, buildings

Unidentified or under-identified structural

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damage in nuclear reactors can be cataclysmic. Inspection of critical systems such as nuclear reactors is complicated and time-consuming.

Videos captured by an automatic crack detection system can easily misidentify small scratches or welds as cracks, so technicians must review videos frame by frame. It is a time-consuming process with opportunities for human errors.

A system under development at Purdue University uses artificial intelligence to detect cracks captured in videos of nuclear reactors. The system analyzes video, frame by frame, to detect any cracks.

The new system detects cracks in each video frame while the algorithm scheme is capable of tracking the crack from one frame to the next.

"This is a giant leap for inspection technology and being able to reduce accidents, deaths and maintenance costs," said Mohammad R. Jahanshahi, an assistant professor in Purdue's College of Engineering, who leads the research team. "It lets the computer do the hard work, and then provides a human operator with quantitative information about the crack such as the thickness and the length of the crack."

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-ai-technology-critical-nuclear-reactors.html