In the shipbuilding industry, the non-destructive testing for welding quality inspection is mainly used for the permanent storage of the testing results and the radio-graphic testing which can visually inspect the interior of the welded part. Experts are required to properly detect the test results and it takes a lot of time and cost to manually Interpret the radio-graphic testing image of the structure over 500 blocks. The algorithms that automatically interpret the existing radio-graphic testing images to extract features through image pre-processing and classify the defects using neural networks, and only partial automation is performed. In order to implement the feature extraction and classification in one algorithm and to implement the overall automation, this paper proposes a method of automatically detecting welding defect using Faster R-CNN which is a deep learning basis. We analyzed the data to learn algorithms and compared the performance improvements using data augmentation method to artificially increase the limited data. In order to appropriately extract the features of the radio-graphic testing image, two internal feature extractors of Faster R-CNN were selected, compared, and performance evaluation was performed.
Welding defects must be inspected to verify that the welds meet the requirements of ship welded joints, and in welding defect inspection, among nondestructive inspections, radiographic inspection is widely applied during the production process. To perform nondestructive inspection, the completed weldment must be transported to the nondestructive inspection station, which is expensive; consequently, automation of welding defect detection is required. Recently, at several processing sites of companies, continuous attempts are being made to combine deep learning to detect defects more accurately. Preprocessing for welding defects in radiographic inspection images should be prioritized to automatically detect welding defects using deep learning during radiographic nondestructive inspection. In this study, by analyzing the pixel values, we developed an image preprocessing method that can integrate the defect features. After maximizing the contrast between the defect and background in radiographic through CLAHE (contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization), denoising (noise removal), thresholding (threshold processing), and concatenation were sequentially performed. The improvement in detection performance due to preprocessing was verified by comparing the results of the application of the algorithm on raw images, typical preprocessed images, and preprocessed images. The mAP for the training data and test data was 84.9% and 51.2% for the preprocessed image learning model, whereas 82.0% and 43.5% for the typical preprocessed image learning model and 78.0%, 40.8% for the raw image learning model. Object detection algorithm technology is developed every year, and the mAP is improving by approximately 3% to 10%. This study achieved a comparable performance improvement by only preprocessing with data.
Metals created by melting basic metal and welding rods in welding operations are referred to as weld beads. The weld bead shape allows the observation of pores and defects such as cracks in the weld zone. Radiographic testing images are used to determine the quality of the weld zone. The extraction of only the weld bead to determine the generative pattern of the bead can help efficiently locate defects in the weld zone. However, manual extraction of the weld bead from weld images is not time and cost-effective. Efficient and rapid welding quality inspection can be conducted by automating weld bead extraction through deep learning. As a result, objectivity can be secured in the quality inspection and determination of the weld zone in the shipbuilding and offshore plant industry. This study presents a method for detecting the weld bead shape and location from the weld zone image using image preprocessing and deep learning models, and extracting the weld bead through image post-processing. In addition, to diversify the data and improve the deep learning performance, data augmentation was performed to artificially expand the image data. Contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) is used as an image preprocessing method, and the bead is extracted using U-Net, a pixel-based deep learning model. Consequently, the mean intersection over union (mIoU) values are found to be 90.58% and 85.44% in the train and test experiments, respectively. Successful extraction of the bead from the radiographic testing image through post-processing is achieved.
30 June 2025 in Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
Capsizing accidents are regarded as marine accidents with a high rate of casualties per accident. Approximately 89% of all such accidents involve small ships (vessels with gross tonnage of less than 10 tons). Stability calculations are critical for assessing the risk of capsizing incidents and evaluating a ship’s seaworthiness. Despite the high frequency of capsizing accidents involving them, small ships are generally exempt from adhering to stability regulations, thus remaining systemically exposed to the risk of capsizing. Moreover, the absence of essential design documents complicates direct ship stability calculations. This study utilizes hull form feature data—obtained from the general arrangement of small ships—as input for a deep learning model. The model is structured as a multilayer neural network and aims to infer hydrostatic curves, which are required data for stability calculations.
Accurate prediction of ship roll motion is essential for safe and autonomous navigation. This study presents a deep learning framework that estimates both roll motion and epistemic uncertainty using Monte Carlo (MC) Dropout. Two architectures, a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network and a Transformer encoder, were trained on HydroD–Wasim simulations covering various sea states, speeds, and damage conditions, and validated with real voyage data from two ferries, showing complementary performance, where LSTM achieved higher accuracy and Transformer provided more reliable confidence intervals. Model performance was evaluated by mean squared error (MSE), prediction interval coverage probability (PICP), and prediction interval normalized average width (PINAW). The LSTM achieved lower MSE, showing superior deterministic accuracy, while the Transformer produced higher PICP and wider PINAW, indicating more reliable uncertainty estimation. Results confirm that MC Dropout effectively quantifies epistemic uncertainty, improving the reliability of deep learning–based ship motion forecasting for intelligent maritime operations.