64

Proceedings of the National Seminar & Exhibition

on Non-Destructive Evaluation
NDE 2009, December 10-12, 2009

Inspection of Bonded Repair Patches in Aircraft

using Ultrasonic Guided Waves
Padmakumar Puthillath and Joseph L. Rose
More info about this article: https://www.ndt.net/?id=9812

Engineering Science and Mechanics Department, 212, EES Bldg., Pennsylvania State University, PA 16802, U.S.A

E-mail : [email protected]

Abstract
Aircraft structures subject to service loads and chemical environments develop structural weaknesses like cracks, corrosion etc. In order to
mitigate the resulting reduction in the useful service life of aircrafts, repairs are done in the form of adhesively bonding plates e.g. titanium
plates bonded to aluminum fuselage. Typical of adhesive joints, these bonded repair patches also have interfacial (adhesive) or bulk (cohesive)
weaknesses in the joint. Nondestructive inspection of these structures is required to ensure the quality of the repair patches. A systematic
approach for the inspection of adhesive repair patches is demonstrated in this work. Among the multiple mode and frequency combinations
possible in a structure, defect sensitive guided wave modes were selected from theoretical studies and verified successfully on epoxy bonded
titanium-aluminum samples with simulated adhesive and cohesive weaknesses.

1. Introduction This study comprehends the progress made in mode

selection for inspection of defects in an adhesive joint -
Aircraft structures are subject to fatigue loading and titanium patch bonded to aluminum aircraft skin using epoxy.
chemical environments while in service leading to the Bonded samples were prepared with controlled interfacial
formation of cracks, corrosion etc. In order to mitigate the conditions simulating adhesive and cohesive weaknesses.
resulting reduction in useful service life of aircrafts, repairs Using the modes selected from the theoretical study,
are done. Adhesively bonding metal or composite patches to experiments were performed using wedge mounted
the damaged surface of aircraft, after appropriate surface piezoelectric transducers. With the collected waveforms the
treatment, can improve the stiffness of the weakened part [1]. different conditions of weakness in the bond were identified
The adhesive bonding used is susceptible to interfacial (or successfully.
adhesive) and bulk (or cohesive) defects, making
nondestructive inspection essential in order to ascertain the
quality of repairs. Practical cases of adhesive repairs can be 2. Guided wave mode selection
found in the literature [2,3].
Recently, researchers have demonstrated a method for Ultrasonic guided wave dispersion curves provide the
health monitoring of repairs using strain gages bonded to theoretically possible phase velocity and frequency
the aircraft skin and repair patch [2]. The ratio of strains was combinations that can exist in a structure having free
used to detect debonding between the skin and the repair boundaries. The Lamb wave phase velocity and group
patch. velocity dispersion curves for a typical adhesive repair patch
Ultrasonic wave propagation through structures is - epoxy (0.66 mm thick) bonded Titanium (1.6002 mm),
dependent on the material elastic properties. Ultrasound Aluminum (3.175 mm) joint – is shown in Fig. 1. At every
provides a nondestructive means of adhesive bond quality point on the phase velocity dispersion curves, the bonded
assessment. Pilarski and Rose [4,5] have shown the geometry shows a unique cross-sectional vibration pattern –
importance of generating shear at the interface between the termed as the wavestructure. Since the repair patch geometry
adhesive and adherend. This was an improvement of the under study is not mid-plane symmetric, the modes are
bulk wave approach that needed very high frequencies referred by numbers rather than the conventional
(> 10 MHz). Antisymmetric (A) or Symmetric (S) notation.
Ultrasonic guided waves are special kinds of waves Each point on a dispersion curve has a unique
propagating primarily under the influence of the geometry wavestructure and it holds the potential to solve different
and boundary conditions of a waveguide. They are inspection problems. In the literature there have been
characterized by dispersion which is captured in the form of instances [6] where the guided wave mode selection has
phase and group velocity variation with frequency [4]. Rose been carried out to address different defect detection
and co-workers [6] have successfully demonstrated mode scenarios.
selection principles by employing modes from the overlap In this work, the adhesive or interfacial defects possible
between dispersion curves of the individual plate that form at the aluminum-epoxy interface and also the cohesive or
the adhesive bond.
 NDE 2009, December 10-12,2009 65

Fig. 2 : Normalized in-plane displacement value is shown

superimposed over the dispersion curves for titanium-
epoxy-aluminum joint. The arrow on top of the figure
indicates the mode 18 – that has one of the highest in-
plane displacements at the aluminum-epoxy interface.
Fig. 1 : Phase velocity and group velocity dispersion curves for
bonded repair patch: Aluminum (3.175 mm)-Epoxy (0.66
mm)-Titanium (1.6002 mm). The guided wave modes weakness and between the layers of epoxy to create cohesive
are numbers in sequential order. weakness. A folded strip of teflon was also suitably placed
for creating both adhesive and cohesive weaknesses in the
bulk weakness in the epoxy layer are studied. In order to repair patch. A bubble wrap was used to create another
inspect the interfacial weaknesses at the aluminum-epoxy instance of adhesive weakness.
interface in the bonded repair patch, the in-plane
displacement at that interface was used as the criterion. 4. Experimental work and results
Figure 2 shows in grayscale the normalized interfacial in-
plane displacement value superimposed on the guided wave There are various techniques for exciting guided waves
modes. in structures for experimental work viz. acrylic wedge, oblique
In addition to the interfacial in-plane displacement incidence in a water immersion mode, or a comb transducer
feature, in order to simplify the interpretation of the with or without time delays. A variable angle acrylic wedge
experimentally measurements waveform, it is mostly preferred arrangement was adopted due to its ease of implementation
to have minimum number of modes excited within the and flexibility to generate guided wave modes at different
structure. The guided wave mode selected should also have phase velocities.
a smaller wavelength to improve sensitivity to smaller defects. The mode identified in Fig. 2 (mode 18) was generated
The mode 18 (from Fig. 1), identified with an arrow in Fig. 2, using a variable angle beam acrylic wedge set to an incidence
at a higher phase velocity range (14-16 km/s) was thus
selected for inspection of the bonded joint.

3. Preparation of samples with simulated defects

In order to verify the theoretical work, small repair patch
samples – i.e. epoxy bonded Titanium-Aluminum joint were
created. Aerospace grade sheet epoxy – EA9696 was used as
the adhesive. Defects were introduced at controlled depths
in order to study the wave propagation across cohesive and
adhesive weaknesses. Aluminum (3.175 mm) and Titanium
(1.6002 mm) plate samples were polished using abrasive disc
pads, cleaned with acetone followed by coating with sol-gel
and water based primer.
For each repair patch, two epoxy layers were stacked
between the prepared faces of the Aluminum and Titanium
plates and cured under vacuum conditions with the
application of appropriate pressure and temperature inside Fig. 3 : Energy transmission from frequency sweep experiments
an autoclave. Square defects with 0.5" sides were introduced using variable angle acrylic wedges adjusted to 10°
at the Aluminum-epoxy interface for creating adhesive incidence and reception angle in pitch-catch mode.
66 Puthillath and Rose : Proceedings of the National Seminar & Exhibition on Non-Destructive Evaluation

commercial transducers mounted on fixed angle wedges is

shown in Fig. 4. The pulse input to the transmitter was a tone
burst cosine pulse at 2.5 MHz. The RF signals from Fig. 4
clearly show that the guided wave mode selected from the
theoretical study was able to distinguish between the
different cases of interface conditions simulated and a good
joint among the repair patch samples fabricated.
Commercially available 2.25 MHz transducers were used
as transmitter and receiver and tone burst input was supplied
to the transmitter.

Conclusions
In this work, a promising systematic approach to
selection of guided wave modes for the inspection of
adhesive and cohesive weaknesses in an adhesively bonded
repair patch, comprised of epoxy bonded aluminum and
titanium repair patch, is presented. One of the guided wave
Fig. 4 : The RF signals collected by placing fixed angle wedges modes with large in-plane displacement at the aluminum-
(10°) with 2.25 MHz transducers mounted on top, across epoxy interface in a titanium-epoxy-aluminum bonded joint
the defective and non-defective repair patches in a was selected for the inspection. Several repair patch samples
pitch-catch mode. A tone burst excitation source was - epoxy bonded aluminum-titanium plates - were fabricated in
used to pulse the transmitter. the lab with simulated interfacial weakness conditions. Acrylic
angle beam wedges set to an angle of 10°, with 2.25 MHz
angle of 10°. Experiments were performed by arranging the transducer mounted on top was found to be able to generate
wedge mounted transducers (2.25 MHz, and 12.7 mm in interface sensitive mode in the bonded repair patch. Using
diameter) in pitch-catch configuration and varying the a matching receiver, it was possible to distinguish between
excitation frequency from 1 MHz to 3 MHz in steps of 50 kHz. the good and bad repairs.
The RF signals collected were squared and summed to obtain
an energy quantity for each excitation signal in the range of
frequencies 1 MHz and 3 MHz at 50 kHz intervals. A References
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