A fuzzy approach to the evaluation of human factors in ultrasonic nondestructive examinations

Human factors are among the main elements affecting the reliability of nondestructive examinations (NDE). In a man-machine system, human reliability is affected by many factors (performance shaping factors) whose influence on reliability cannot be easily expressed quantitatively. This paper identifies and ranks 59 perform-ance shaping factors by using a fuzzy reasoning method and proposes a procedure to measure them. This will determine the Quality Standard (QS) for a NDE system so that human reliability in ultrasonic nondestructive examinations can be qualitatively evaluated.