Detecting Crack Nucleation/Damage Mechanisms In Sea-Based Aviation Environments

To address the US Navy"s need for an innovative nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technique to detect the onset of crack nucleation in wet and dry corrosion environments under various stress fields and gradients. X-wave Innovations, Inc. (XII) along with Loyola University Maryland (LUM), proposes an innovative ultrasonic NDE technique for in-situ detection of crack nucleation under various stress fields and gradients. The proposed approach is based on Scanning Acoustic Microscopy (SAM), which is capable of providing high resolution images of both surface and internal cracking damages in metallic materials. By incorporating acoustic microscopy with a loading system and confined corrosive environments, the proposed SAM technique will enable an analytical study that captures material degradation at both global and local levels in corrosive environments to provide a framework of damage mechanisms of the crack tip chemistry and chemical kinetics at the micro scale level. In Phase I, XII will develop a prototype and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. In Phase II, XII will complete a working prototype that meets all requirements specified in the SBIR topic.