Augmented and Facilitated Nondestructive Inspection (NDI) for Large Area Assessments

Sustaining the AF aircraft fleet over time drives the need for significant improvements of recurring NDI processes/methods, accuracy, and productivity as compared to conventional methods now used.  This Phase II project will integrate uniquely automated NDI technologies, methods/processes suitable for large areas NDI that can augment and facilitate NDI of upper wing skins to minimize inspector workload, especially after initial set-up. This better automated NDI approach will result in an accelerated inspection process to detect corrosion and other defects in wing skins attached to aircraft.  Skins are commonly aerospace Aluminum alloys (e.g., 0.125-in to 0.625-in thick. The KC-135 has 0.25-in thick wing skin in many places with as many as 5 thicknesses on the wing.  Adaptable to multiple NDI instruments, our robot-enabled multi-modal NDI deployment system locates/positions and moves probes to the work envelopes and scans/detects wing skin wall loss and defects. The system generates reporting in real time. The operator/inspection supervisor is also provided location-correlated 3D visualization of results.  The corrosion types of predominant interest are exfoliation and general thinning, although corrosion types, such as intergranular, are also present.  The highly productive, uniquely automated system with multiple probes will non-destructively inspect large areas while the wing skin is in place, and also effectively scan areas of greatest interest to include fastener rows and faying surfaces of the wing skins when there is a second layer underneath the skin, such as a stringer flange.