THREE DIMENSIONAL DEFECT RECONSTRUCTION USING STATE SPACE SEARCH AND WOODBURY’S SUBSTRUCTURE METHOD.

This paper introduces a model-based approach to reconstruct the three-dimensional defect profiles using eddy-current heat exchanger tube inspection signals. The method uses a Woodbury’s substructure finite element forward model to simulate the underlying physics, a state space defect representation, and a tree search algorithm to solve the inverse problem. The advantage of the substructure method is that it divides the whole solution domain into two substructures and only the region of interest (ROI) with dramatic material changes will be updated in each iterative step. Since the number of elements inside the ROI is very small compared with the number of elements in the entire mesh, the computational effort needed in both LU factorization and coefficient matrix assembly is reduced. Therefore, the execution time is reduced significantly making the inversion very efficient. The initial inversion results are presented to confirm the validity of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]