A novel shearography system for aerospace non-destructive testing

Abstract

Non-destructive testing (NDT) is a vital process in aerospace engineering to ensure the structural integrity of components. Shearography offers numerous advantages over established inspection techniques. In particular, it has the potential to reduce inspection times by an order of magnitude, can be applied to complex geometries and does not require immersion of the component. These advantages are likely to become increasingly important for next-generation aircraft designs, which necessitate the use of highly complex structures and materials. Despite the inherent advantages of optical inspection, commercial systems have failed to address many of the practical limitations. This paper identifies the problems that have inhibited technology transfer of shearography from the laboratory to the harsh production environment. Innovative solutions are presented and a production demonstrator is described which has been built at British Aerospace to evaluate these concepts. The system is currently under evaluation by both optical experts and NDT specialists. Early results, validated by destructive testing, have already been valuable in inspecting components that have been notoriously difficult to examine using existing techniques.