LAUSR

Abstract To realize a three-dimensional (3D) visual display and evaluate the internal defects of a ceramic hollow plate membrane, a method for creating a 3D reconstruction of the internal defects based on an ultrasound imaging technique applying triangular matrix–synthetic aperture focusing is proposed. First, a phased array detector is used to scan the surface of the ceramic membrane, and ultrasound imaging is achieved based on the triangular matrix–synthetic aperture focusing technology. The acquired B-scan images are pre-processed and a 3D reconstruction is achieved based on the contours of the internal defects. Finally, a 3D visualization of the internal defects of a hollow plate ceramic membrane is realized. The use of a triangular matrix focusing method can improve the detection efficiency because the amount of data acquired and the number of calculations are reduced by nearly half. In addition, the synthetic aperture focusing method can ensure a high imaging resolution, which leads to an improved recognition accuracy of the defect size. As a result, the error of the diameter measurements of the inner hole defects ranges between 2% and 3%, and the error of the diameter and length measurements of the crack line defects ranges between 2% and 4%. Experimental results with real datasets are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of our method as compared with traditional methods.