Mobile Parts Hospital NDE/Materials Characterization Checkout Center

This proposal presents to the Army a unique system for testing parts made by the Mobile Parts Hospital. The concept system can even be built into the MPH and can be integrated with any automated parts handling capability. The proposed system will achieve the traditional Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) results as to flaws and voids. In addition, this system will provide engineering results such as elastic constants to predict part stiffness. Vector information will be provided to assess part preferential anisotropy or uniformity as required. The approach is based on an ultrasonic pulsed phase locked loop, a type of high-resolution acoustic spectrometer that has resolution of parts per ten million. This simple to use one-sided (or through transmission) system will determine the rates of change in acoustic natural velocity in the fabricated parts as a function of strain. Such measurements provide the key 3rd order elasticity parameters. The instrument concept builds on decades of award-winning research by the PI while at NASA that now can be brought to commercial uses with the Luna philosophy of invent, build and commercialize which has led to five new spin-off companies in the past 4 years.