Rapid Large Area Nondestructive Inspection of Composites by Portable Electronic Speckle Pattern Shearography

Cybernetic Systems Corporation (CSC) proposes to develop an easy-to-use and portable nondestructive equipment for rapid detection of defects in complexly shaped aircraft composite components. After extensive literature study and from our experience, this tool will be based on electronic speckle pattern shearography (ESPS) and/or electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI). These techniques along with appropriate stressing methods can quickly and cost effectively lcoated the defects in compoiste structures. They both are nondestrutive, fast, sensitive to a wide variety of defects, and they have computer controlled automatic data acquisiton, analysis, and presentation. However, due to the field (on-aircraft) application, ESPS is very likely to be a more suitable candidtae. As a result, we will concentrate on developing a portable ESPS-based nondestructive inspection (NDI) tool. But at the same time we will also investigate the feasibility of an ESPI-based system or a combination of the two. ESPI and ESPS measure the displacement and the derivative of the displacement respectively. The loading (stressing) techniques involved in NDI applications using ESPI and ESPS provide a direct connection between the detected defects and the effect of the defects on the integrity and strength of the structures.