Nondestructive testing of aircraft components through ultrasonic testing is well established as one of the industry's benchmark techniques. Its capability to penetrate both thin and thick material provides arguably the best information to inspectors on subsurface faults. However, there are tow basic drawbacks to it use: its difficulty to employ and its slow speed. Real-time C-scan solves both of these issues while maintain high quality subsurface information. Cracking, corrosion, voids, delaminations and impact damage can be observed in 1/30 second. The basis for this technology is a novel 2D imaging array that creates immediate, high-resolution images of subsurface faults. The latest developments of the technique include commercial introduction of a through-transmission scanning product which can inspect large structures, as well as significant progress in the development of a hand held device which produces instantaneous high quality imagery of defects in reflection over an area as the user simply holds a probe up to the target. This work is funded in part by the Navy SBIR 'Fasttrack' program.

Date Published: 28 January 1999
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 3586, Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, and Aerospace Hardware III, (28 January 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.339910

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3586:
Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, and Aerospace Hardware III
Ajit K. Mal, Editor(s)