The Aerospace Corporation

Joseph T Case

Shant Kenderian

Dhruv N Patel

Eric C Johnson

Tait DeWitt McLouth

Yong Min Kim

Self-determined shot geometry for open-configuration portable x-ray computed tomography (CT) includes capturing one or more x-ray shot images into a computing system, and estimating an unknown constellation model and one or more shot geometries. It also includes reconstructing a volume image from the one or more captured shot images and the one or more geometries using computed tomography.

Self-determined shot geometry for open-configuration portable x-ray computed tomography (CT)

A method for self-determination of shot geometry for use in open-configuration portable x-ray computed tomography (CT) includes inputting one or more x-ray shot images into a computing system. The method also include determining, by the computing system, one or more shot geometries from the one or more inputted x-ray shot images. The method further includes reconstructing, by the computing system, a volume image from the one or more inputted x-ray shot images and the one or more shot geometries. The method also includes outputting, by the computing system, a reconstructed volume image.

A build plate may include one or more thermocouples placed on an underside of the build plate. The one or more thermocouples output temperature fluctuation to assist in monitoring for build plate separation of a product located on top of the build plate.

Monitoring during additive manufacturing process using thermocouples

An ultrasonic inspection technique may be used to inspect quality of a bond between thermal protection system (TPS) material and a composite. The technique may include a highly damped transducer emitting an incident wave, which may traverse through thermal protection system (TPS) material and to a back wall of a composite. The incident wave may be of a low frequency signal, and may return a bondline echo and a backwall echo. The bondline echo is returned when the incident wave reaches a bondline and the backwall echo is returned when the incident wave reaches the backwall of the composite. The bondline echo and the backwall echo may be used to generate a waveform to assess the bond quality, revealing possible unbonds or kissing unbonds.

Ultrasonic inspection technique to assess bond quality in composite structures

A portable x-ray computed tomography (CT) system may utilize algebraic reconstruction techniques (ART) to produce 3D volume images from tens of shots or less. The system may be deployed as desired where x-ray source and detector positions are not known beforehand. A fast, accurate matrix may be formed relating voxels to detector pixels via a modified ray tracing algorithm, eliminating artifacts caused by approaches using rough approximations. Masking or recombination may be performed to remove detector pixels that are not part of a region of interest (ROI) or lump the pixels together as one unknown, significantly reducing matrix size, and hence, computation time. The positions and orientations of the x-ray source and detector may be treated as unknowns and refined to optimize a volume image metric. For example, the optimized metric could be image contrast, image sparsity, or total variation.

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Hawthorne, CA, United States of America

Joseph T Case