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Development and Application of Innovative Non Destructive Techniques For Defects Evaluation of Aeronautical Components

The document discusses developing new non-destructive techniques based on thermal methods to evaluate defects in aeronautical composite materials. It aims to 1) optimize test procedures and data analysis software for lock-in thermography and thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) on composite specimens, 2) study alternative thermal sources for thermography, and 3) apply the procedures to real components. The techniques seek to characterize delaminations and detachments at reduced testing time and costs compared to current methods like ultrasound and shearography.

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43 views

Development and Application of Innovative Non Destructive Techniques For Defects Evaluation of Aeronautical Components

The document discusses developing new non-destructive techniques based on thermal methods to evaluate defects in aeronautical composite materials. It aims to 1) optimize test procedures and data analysis software for lock-in thermography and thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) on composite specimens, 2) study alternative thermal sources for thermography, and 3) apply the procedures to real components. The techniques seek to characterize delaminations and detachments at reduced testing time and costs compared to current methods like ultrasound and shearography.

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Title

Development and application of innovative non destructive techniques for defects evaluation of
aeronautical components

Tutors
Prof. U. Galietti, Dott. D. Palumbo

Collaborations
- Alenia Aermacchi

Abstract
The aim of the project is develop new techniques based on non destructive tests for the predictive
maintenance of new materials such as the composite materials. The new techniques based on
thermal methods will be used in order to avoid catastrophic failure of structures manufactured of
composite material. The residual life of mechanical components may be assessed also with these
procedures and different advantages can be obtained in terms of costs.
The research is based on application of thermal methods used for non destructive evaluation of
mechanical components during the manufacturing and maintenance.
Nowadays, the NDT techniques used for the maintenance of mechanical components require high
tests time, and qualified operators. In same case is necessary carry out the tests in laboratory with
subsequent increase of costs due to inoperative work of the plant.
Thermal methods allow to obtain several advantages respect to traditional NDT techniques, such as:
an easy and flexible test set-up and the possibility to carry out in situ tests on components subjected
to operating loads.

Background
Composite materials are nowadays widely used in many applications where lightweight is required.
There are many examples of large structures made in composite material from boating-yachting to
aeronautical or aerospace structures. During manufacturing or during their life, these composite
components need to be inspected in order to assess presence of defects, such us voids and
delamination, and, in this eventuality, also to characterise them.
Since composites have a typical brittle failure that can involve both matrix and fibres, impact during
service, especially at low velocity, can be dangerous since it determines typically a delamination,
that very often cannot be revealed by visual inspection, with serious consequences of the residual
strength of components [1]. Hence the use of other Non Destructive Techniques represents a
necessary tool for integrity assessment in composite components. The choice or eventual
development of adequate NDE techniques for scanning large structures has to take into account
testing time and the capability of detection of the maximum size of accepted defect.
In literature various NDT techniques have been used for detection of damage in composites such as
ultrasound [2] active thermography [3], x-ray, shearography, vibration testing and electrical
potential technique [4]. As a consequence of the need to reduce at minimum the testing time,
keeping or improving the actual capability of defect detection, new NDT techniques, or procedure
that improved existing techniques, were developed, as for instance ultrasound phase array or digital
radiography and shearography.
Meola et al., [5] studied the behaviour of GFRP specimens under low velocity impact with infrared
thermography. In particular on-line monitoring of material during the impact test and NDT
evaluation with lock-in thermography allows to individuate initiation and propagation zones of the
damage through measurements of both temperature increase and warm area extension.
Usamentiaga et al., [6] presented a method to automatically characterize damage in carbon fiber
composites using PPT (pulse phase thermography) technique. In particular, an automatic classifier
based on artificial neural networks has been used to estimate the impact energy of the detected
defects. The method showed to be very promising, but requires about 30 seconds acquisition time
for each area and a very heavy data processing. Moreover the focus of the work is on determining
the energy of this eventual impact and not on the characterization of defect, limiting to this kind of
defect the possible use of procedure.
Interesting results were obtained using the TSA (Thermoelastic Stress Analysis). In this case the
cracks are detected by means a dynamic load applied on materials [7-9]. Krstulovic-Opara et al.,
[10] showed that the combination of TSA and Pulsed Thermography gives information about both
fiber integrity and delamination of composite.
In order to reduce testing time and costs for scanning large structures, new procedures for InfraRed
Thermography need to be developed for a quantitative characterization of defects in composite
materials such as delaminations or detachments [11], [12].

Aim of the project


The project is organized in the following stages:

Stage 1: Feasibility tests and optimization of developed procedures with thermographic techniques

- Choice of material and design of specimens for mechanical characterization and NDT tests.
- Experimental tests with different thermographic techniques (Lock-in thermography and
TSA) on designed specimens for the optimization of test set-up.
- Development of test procedures and software for data analysis.

Stage 2: Study of alternative thermal sources for the application of thermographic techniques

- Choice of appropriate thermal sources for the application of thermographic technique on


specimens produced in Stage 1.
- Experimental tests using different thermal sources in order to evaluate the best set-up.
- Development of test procedures and software for data analysis.

Stage 3: Application of procedures and software obtained in Stage 1 and 2, on real components

- Choice of real components to study.


- Application of procedures and software developed in Stage 1 and 2, on chosen components.

References

[1] Richardson MOM, Wisheart MJ (1996) Review of low-velocity impact properties of composite
matrerials. Composites Part A 27A:1123-1131.
[2] Hosur MV, Murthy CRL, Ramamurthy TS, Shet A (1998) Estimation of impact-induced damage in
CFRP laminates through ultrasonic imaging. NDT&E International 31-5:359-374.
[3] Maldague XPV, (2001) Theory and practice of infrared technology of non-destructive testing. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc, ISBN 0-471-18190-0.
[4] Angelidis N, Irving PE (2007) Detection of impact damage in CFRP laminates by means of electrical
potential techniques. Composites Science and Technology 67:594-604.
[5] Meola C, Carlomagno GM (2010) Impact damage in GFRP: New insights with infrared thermography.
Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing 41:1839-1847.
[6] Usamentiaga R, Venegas P, Guerediaga J, Vega L, Lòpez I (2013) Feature extraction and analysis for
automatic characterization of impact damage in carbon fiber composites using active thermography.
NDT&E International 54:123-132.
[7] Dulieu-Barton J, M.Stanley P (1998) Development and applications of thermoelastic stress analysis.
Journal of Strain Analysis 33:93-104.
[8] Stanley P, Chan WK (1985) Quantitative stress analysis by means of the thermoelastic effect. Journal
of Strain Analysis 20:129-137.
[9] Galietti U, Pappalettere C (2009) Analisi del danneggiamento su componenti in materiale composito
con tecnica termoelastica. AIAS XXXVIII Convegno Nazionale.
[10] Palumbo D, Ancona F, Galietti U, (2014) Quantitative damage evaluation of composite materials with
microwave thermographic technique: feasibility and new data analysis. Meccanica, ISSN 0025-6455,
DOI 10.1007/s11012-014-9981-2.
[11] Galietti U, Dimitri R, Palumbo D, Rubino P, (2012) Thermal Analysis and Mechanical
Characterization of GFRP Joints. 15th European Conference on Composite Materials (ECCM 15), 24
28 July 2012, Venice (Italy), ISBN 978-88-88785-33-2.

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