Early Warning Aircraft Damage Detection Using Electronic Laser Speckle Pattern Interferometry

Cybernet Systems Corporation (CSC) proposes to develop an easy-to-use, fast, and nondestructive tool to detect areas of damage in aerospace vehicles. After extensive literature study and from our experience, this tool will be based on electronic laser speckle pattern interferometry/shearography techniques. These techniques can quickly and cost effectively find the locations of damage/flaws. They are non-contacting, fast, sensitive to wide a variety of flaws/damage, and they have a direct data connection with computer systems. Two techniques will be investigated, namely ESPI (electronic speckle pattern interferometry) and ESPS (electronic speckle pattern shearography). ESPI and ESPS measure the displacement and the derivative of the displacement respectively. Unlike ultrasonics and x-ray techniques. loading (stressing) is an essential part of nondestructive inspection (NDI) processes using ESPI and ESPS techniques. The loading provides a very important connection between the detected damage/flaw and the effect of the flaws/damage on the integrity and strength of the structures. The main goal of the proposed Phase I effort will outline a test plan of demonstrating the technology on a small structure. During the project, a compat optical head using advanced fiber optics technologies and a laser diode, loading methods, and related software would be developed to support this goal.