Inspection Challenges for Aging Commercial Aircraft

摘要

A great deal of progress has been made on improving NDT inspection methods applicable to commercial aircraft. The industry has benefited as a result. To name a few examples: 1. Advanced eddy current methods developed at NASA have made possible the detection of very small surface cracks beneath rivets. 2. Thermographic methods, pioneered by Wayne State University, NASA, and others, are finding new applications and moving into the NDT mainstream. 3. The second layer ultrasonic inspection technique developed at Northwestern University has been responsible for dramatic maintenance cost savings on older DC-9 aircraft. In spite of these successes, significant areas remain that have not received the full attention of the research community. Often these areas are overlooked because they have not been implicated in past catastrophic failures, or they involve structure areas that are not large or accessible.