Soft computing and eddy currents to estimate and classify delaminations in biomedical device CFRP plates

This paper presents an approach based on eddy currents induced by suitable magnetic induction fields to test, estimate, and classify subsurface delaminations in Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) plates for biomedical devices. The two-dimensional maps obtained, characterised by high fuzziness, required the software development of a procedure based on a highly efficient fuzzy classifier that exploits fuzzy similarity computations with reduced computational load by collecting similar maps (deriving from equally similar defects) in specific defects. The hardware implementation of what is designed in software (plate-probe system) detects and evaluates the entity of the defects due to delaminations by a classification percentage comparable with the performances obtained from more sophisticated classifiers, providing a possible tool for evaluating the delaminations potentially useful to assess aircraft compliance with applicable safety standards.