  This paper presents a fractal analysis of radiographic patterns obtained from
specimens with three types of inserted welding defects: lack of fusion, lack of
penetration, and porosity. The study focused on patterns of carbon steel beads
from radiographs of the International Institute of Welding (IIW). The
radiographs were scanned using a greyscale with 256 levels, and the fractal
features of the surfaces constructed from the radiographic images were
characterized by means of Hurst, detrended-fluctuation, and minimal-cover
analyses. A Karhunen-Loeve transformation was then used to classify the curves
obtained from the fractal analyses of the various images, and a study of the
classification errors was performed. The obtained results indicate that fractal
analyses can be an effective additional tool for pattern recognition of weld
defects in radiographic tests.
