Broadband Antennas and SDR for Evaluating Corrosion Under Thick coatings (BASECUT)

Corrosion evaluation and characterization is a complex task that typically requires multiple sensing technologies and a trained operator to perform the inspection and interrupt the data. This task is even more challenging when the surfaces to be inspected are not easily accessible by the human operator. Many of the technologies currently used for corrosion evaluation are not well suited to be adapted to robotic platforms such as remote operated vehicles (ROVs). Nanohmics, in collaboration with Professor Maggie Chen at Texas State University and using COTS SDRs from Epiq Solutions, proposes to develop the Broadband Antennas and Software Defined Radio (SDR) for Evaluating Corrosion Under Thick coatings (BASECUT) system that will enable multiple RF NDE inspection technologies in a single payload. In Phase I the team will demonstrate the ability of a benchtop BASECUT payload to measure corrosion using multiple RF NDE techniques and combine those measurements into an easy to interpret corrosion map. By combining broadband antennas and a high performance SDR, multiple different sensing techniques can be performed using a single sensor payload. In Phase II the team will integrate the BASECUT payload into an ROV and demonstrate autonomous corrosion mapping underwater.