Surface smoothing for topological optimized 3D models

The topology optimization methodology is widely applied in industrial engineering to design lightweight and efficient components. Despite that, many techniques based on structural optimization return a digital model that is far from being directly manufactured, mainly because of surface noise given by spikes and peaks on the component. For this reason, mesh post-processing is needed. Surface smoothing is one of the numerical procedures that can be applied to a triangulated mesh file to return a more appealing geometry. In literature, there are many smoothing algorithms available, but especially those based on the modification of vertex position suffer from high mesh shrinkage and loss of important geometry features like holes and surface planarity. For these reasons, an improved vertex-based algorithm based on Vollmer’s surface smoothing has been developed and introduced in this work along with two case studies included to evaluate its performances compared with existent algorithms. The innovative approach herein developed contains some sub-routines to mitigate the issues of common algorithms, and confirms to be efficient and useful in a real-life industrial context. Thanks to the developed functions able to recognize the geometry feature to be frozen during the smoothing process, the user’s intervention is not required to guide the procedure to get proper results.

Rectangular wave eddy current testing using for imaging of backside defects of steel plates

Accurate, easy, and fast inspection of defects on the backside of thick steel plates is essential for the maintenance of infrastructures. Low frequency eddy current testing (LF-ECT) is a promising method to detect defects of the backside of steel plates, with a thickness of approximately 10 mm. However, it is possible that the signal from the backside defect is smaller than that from the surface magnetic noise, causing difficulty identifying the backside defect. In this study, we propose a method to reduce the surface noise by employing a square wave inverter to generate a harmonic signal (rectangular wave ECT, or RECT), and the result demonstrates that the surface noise is successfully reduced using the harmonic signal.