Honeycomb Sandwich Structure Inspection(1001-630)

ABSTRACT: Triton Systems Inc, in conjunction with its OEM and small business partners, proposes the use of advanced data acquisition and analysis inspection techniques to detect and quantify skin/core disbond, crushed core and fluid intrusion defects in aircraft honeycomb sandwich structures. Triton has put together an experienced, cross-functional team to: 1. Provide coupon level simulation of real-world honeycomb sandwich structure defects; 2. Identify the defect size and type detection requirements for honeycomb sandwich structures; 3. Use the proposed NDI methods to demonstrate acquisition capability required to detect and characterize honeycomb sandwich structure defects; 4. Employ post-processing non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques to manipulate and analyze data to provide accurate characterization of detected honeycomb sandwich structure defects; 5. Notionally integrate the NDI methods and NDE techniques into a functional system; 6. Preliminarily evaluate potential higher sensitivity methods (e.g. multi-probe arrays) for greater resolution and productivity; 7. Demonstrate the integrated system on real-world problems (in Phase II); and 8. Summarize the results to estimate probability of detection (POD) for honeycomb sandwich structure defects of various sizes (in Phase II). BENEFIT: The benefits of this approach are: 1. Optimized NDE methods increase the probability of detection (POD) of defects of a certain size in a given component, regardless of location; 2. Post-inspection data manipulation provides full characterization of the defect to enable a design engineer to assess its impact on component strength and life; 3. Some level of automation of the inspection process itself ensures higher reliability than do current manual and hand-held techniques; and 4. Ultimate development of a robust POD model, in conjunction with integration with an FEA-based evaluation tool, will enable design engineers to more accurately calculate the reliability of the component over a range of potential defects. The proposed inspection methods can be applied to a wide range of advanced military and commercial aircraft that incorporate honeycomb sandwich structure components