{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,22]],"date-time":"2026-08-22T04:27:12Z","timestamp":1787372832055,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":41,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"16","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,20]],"date-time":"2026-08-20T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1787184000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"National Key Research and Development Program of China","award":["2024YFB4609000"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2024YFB4609000"]}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100018537","name":"National Science and Technology Major Project","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["J2022-V-0003-0029"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["J2022-V-0003-0029"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100018537","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["12075319"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["12075319"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001809","name":"National Natural Science Foundation of China","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["52507021"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["52507021"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001809","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]},{"award":["12075319"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["12075319"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01h0zpd94","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"award":["52507021"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["52507021"]}],"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/01h0zpd94","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Detecting microcracks in aero-engine blades is paramount for ensuring flight safety, yet conventional inspection methods exhibit significant limitations in precision, efficiency, and applicability. This paper proposes a multi-modal fusion detection network for blade microcracks\u2014VUFNet (visible and ultraviolet multi-modal fusion detection network)\u2014which accurately identifies blade microcracks by integrating visible and ultraviolet image features. First, the blade surface undergoes chromic acid anodisation to enhance microcrack features. Subsequently, visible and ultraviolet light illumination is applied to construct a microcrack dataset. VUFNet employs dual backbone networks to extract visible and ultraviolet features. It incorporates CSPSTR (cross-stage partial bottleneck with swin transformer) to optimise feature extraction capability, and VUFM (visible\u2013ultraviolet multi-modal adaptive fusion module) to deeply fuse visible and ultraviolet features. Finally, MFConv (multi-branch fusion convolution) enhances detection accuracy in microcrack target regions. On the held-out test subset acquired from a single compressor-blade type under a fixed laboratory imaging protocol, VUFNet achieved mAP0.5 and mAP0.5:0.95 values of 96.8% and 85.5%, respectively, with a detection speed of 52.7 fps. These results demonstrate improved within-domain detection performance over the evaluated baselines. Ablation studies further validate the synergistic optimisation effect of VUFM, CSPSTR, and MFConv on model performance.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s26165280","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,20]],"date-time":"2026-08-20T12:57:53Z","timestamp":1787230673000},"page":"5280","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["A Multi-Modal Fusion Network of Visible\u2013Ultraviolet Features for Detecting Aero-Engine Blade Microcracks"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"26","author":[{"given":"Xin","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"National Key Lab of Aerospace Power System and Plasma Technology, Xi\u2019an 710038, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Caizhi","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Key Lab of Aerospace Power System and Plasma Technology, Xi\u2019an 710038, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiaolong","family":"Wei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Key Lab of Aerospace Power System and Plasma Technology, Xi\u2019an 710038, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8381-2378","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Weifeng","family":"He","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Key Lab of Aerospace Power System and Plasma Technology, Xi\u2019an 710038, China"},{"name":"School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Zhigao","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"State-Owned Sida Machinery Manufacturing Company, Xianyang 712201, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yizhen","family":"Yin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi\u2019an Jiaotong University, Xi\u2019an 710049, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wei","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Company Limited, Shenyang 110850, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ligang","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"AVIC Shenyang Aircraft Company Limited, Shenyang 110850, China"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"104842","DOI":"10.1016\/j.engfailanal.2020.104842","article-title":"Effect of foreign object damage on high-cycle fatigue strength of titanium alloy for aero-engine blade","volume":"118","author":"Zhao","year":"2020","journal-title":"Eng. 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