New Acousto-Optic Sensors for Real Time Full Field Acoustic Inspection

New Acousto-Optic (AO) sensors will be produced that will 1) offer at least a 5x increase in the field-of-view of current AO sensors and 2) cover a wide range of frequencies (500kHz-l5MHz). Phase I work will focus on the design and fabrication of the new AO sensors to demonstrate the feasibility of acoustography to provide dramatic increases in ultrasonic inspection over conventional point-by-point ultrasonic inspection methods. In addition, the applicability of acoustography to inspect traditional and advanced materials/components previously outside of acoustography's range will be established. BENEFITS: Large area AO sensors covering 0.5-15MHz frequency range could allow acoustography to provide significant efficiency and cost-savings benefits over conventional point-by-point ultrasonic NDT methods, which are widely used in the military and industry to ensure material/component quality.