MODELING OF THE SOURCES OF SIGNAL FLUCTUATIONS TO DETERMINE THE RELIABILITY OF ULTRASONIC NONDESTRUCTIVE METHODS

It is common practice to quantify inspection reliability in terms of the Probability of Detection (POD) and the Probability of False Alarm (PFA). The determination of these statistical indicators is currently based on very costly and time consuming empirical studies. Physic‐based models are now available to replace part of the experimental data with simulation results. This paper proposes a methodology exploiting existing modeling tools (here CIVA models) to simulate POD curves. Applications of this methodology to realistic ultrasonic inspection setups are also described.