Automated, Rapid Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) of Large Scale Composite Structures

The manual inspection of large composite structures on Navy aircraft such as the KC-130J wing trailing edge requires significant manpower and calendar time. This reduces the availability of assets to the warfighter and increases the life cycle cost of the aircraft. The team of Texas Research Institute, Austin Inc. (TRI/Austin), Computational Tools, and Wesdyne propose to develop robotic nondestructive inspection (NDI) techniques using ultrasonic arrays, and to design and implement a new Automated Defect Analysis (ADA) to significantly reduce the manpower required to accomplish these necessary inspections. Wesdyne’s IntraSpectTM large area robotic scanners provide the hardware platform for the solution. Combining the robotic scanner with a linear ultrasonic array provides the fastest implementation possible of the most sensitive NDI method for typical composite aerospace structures. The TRI Team will then implement a new set of Automated Defect Analysis algorithms to analyze the data as it is being acquired. The ADA will be developed as an add-on to the existing TRI Team’s NDIToolboxTM software, to be integrated into the IntraSpectTM platform and transparent to the end user.