Tangential Homology for Defect Detection in the Time of Flight Diffraction Method (TOFD)

Ultrasonic non‐destructive testing (NDT) techniques are widely used in industry to evaluate properties of a component, material or system without causing any damage. The time of flight diffraction method (TOFD) is regarded as a valuable procedure for the detection of welding defects. We propose an innovative concept for NDT relying on tangential homology. The novel technique allows us to analyze topological properties of manifolds from discrete data. This in turn provides an automated classification of TOFD defects which does not require any interactions with a human operator. (© 2016 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)