Development of Fieldable Systems for Inspecting Aircraft Composite Structures

摘要

It was demonstrated that both the computer aided tap test and the air-coupled ultrasonic scan -were able to image flaws, damage, and internal structures of composite aircraft parts. The interpretation of the features in the tap test image was based on the variation of the contact time (or local stiffness), whereas the features in the air-coupled transmission ultrasonic image were interpreted based on the amplitude and attenuation of the transmission. In terms of the system hardware, the CATT is highly portable and continues to be applied in the inspection and imaging of various composite components. The recently completed manual air-coupled ultrasonic scan system has entered the field test phase and the initial results are very encouraging.