A Quantitative Assessment of Advanced NDI Techniques for Detecting Flaws in Composite Laminate Aircraft Structures. Draft
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
The aircraft industry continues to increase its use of composite materials, most noteworthy in the arena of principle structural elements. This expanded use, coupled with difficulties associated with damage tolerance analysis of composites, has placed greater emphasis on the application of accurate nondestructive inspection (NDI) methods. Traditionally, a few ultrasonic-based inspection methods have been used to inspect solid laminate structures. Recent developments in more advanced NDI techniques have produced a number of new inspection options. Many of these methods can be categorized as wide area techniques that produce two-dimensional flaw maps of the structure. An experiment has been developed to assess the ability of both conventional and advanced NDI techniques to detect voids, disbonds, delaminations, and impact damage in adhesively bonded composite aircraft structures. A series of solid laminate, carbon composite specimens with statistically relevant flaw profiles are being inspected using conventional, hand-held pulse echo UT and resonance, as well as, new NDI methods that have recently been introduced to improve sensitivity and repeatability of inspections. The primary factors affecting flaw detection in laminates are included in this study: material type, flaw profiles, presence of complex geometries like taper and substructure elements, presence of fasteners, secondarily bonded joints, and environmental conditions. One phase of this effort utilized airline personnel to study Probability of Detection (POD) in the field and to formulate improvements to existing inspection techniques. In addition, advanced NDI methods for laminate inspections — such as thermography, shearography, laser ultrasonics, microwave, and phased/linear array UT — were applied to quantify the improvements achievable through the use of more sophisticated NDI. This report presents the composite laminate experiment design and the POD results for advanced NDI with comparisons to results achieved by airline inspectors using conventional UT methods. A companion report provides the full set of results from the conventional NDI testing.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOT. Federal Aviation Administration
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 1762097
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-2014-16956R; 674346
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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