Teardown evaluation of chassis system components plays a critical role in benchmarking, failure analysis, and competitive product assessment. These inspections rely heavily on experienced engineers who interpret visual defect patterns, material conditions, wear signatures, and manufacturing variations. However, expert driven evaluation processes are often subjective, difficult to standardize, and challenging to scale across global engineering teams. This paper presents a structured AI-assisted expert evaluation framework developed to enhance consistency, preserve institutional knowledge, and enable continuous improvement in chassis component teardown analysis.
The proposed system integrates convolutional neural network architectures, including ResNet18 and its variants, into a human in loop inspection workflow. AI models perform initial classification of component images (e.g., OK/not OK and defect subclasses) and provide associated confidence scores. These predictions are presented as decision support, while final authority remains with the evaluating expert. Experts can confirm or override AI outputs, annotate defect regions using bounding boxes, assign subclass categories, and provide structured technical comments.
All expert interactions, including AI disagreements are systematically recorded. Correction instances are analyzed to identify model limitations, ambiguous defect conditions, and data gaps. Expert validated evaluations are incorporated into the training dataset to enable iterative model refinement. This closed loop process supports progressive improvements in model robustness and classification accuracy across varying teardown conditions and component types.
A centralized cloud-based repository maintains full traceability of inspections, including timestamps, AI confidence levels, expert modifications, and annotation metadata. This structured knowledge capture converts tacit engineering judgment into a persistent digital asset, supporting auditability, cross-site alignment, and accelerated onboarding of new engineers.
The framework demonstrates how AI can be effectively deployed as an assistive technology in chassis teardown evaluation, improving repeatability, enhancing data driven benchmarking, and enabling scalable knowledge preservation without displacing expert authority.