Understanding System Complexity in the Non-Destructive Testing of Advanced Composite Products (original) (raw)

Reliable non-destructive inspection of composite materials in use in the aviation industry

CSIR 3rd biennial conference: 2010 science real and, relevant, CSIR International Convention Center, Pretoria, South Africa, 30 August-1 September 2010. Fibre reinforced composite materials are increasingly being used in engineering applications in the aircraft industry as they display an excellent weight to strength ratio. The limitation on the use of these materials in load-bearing applications is largely brought about by the difficulties in inspecting these materials in a non-destructive manner. Also, the lack of mechanical behaviour data for these materials in general e.g. fractures toughness, which could provide information regarding the size of critical defects, contribute to the challenges in inspections. Various inspection technologies have been developed for the inspection of these materials. These include amongst others ultrasonic testing (UT), mechanical impedance or resonance testing, infrared thermography and laser shearography. The range of technologies and equipment a...

Fuzzy logic for non-destructive testing for various composite materials

This paper presents the use of artificial intelligence techniques such as fuzzy logic for non-destructive X-ray testing of various products. The original presented algorithm proposes the defect presence testing in two stages in the radiographic image obtained from the inspected product. The first stage of the algorithm checks whether a possible defect (an area from the radiographic image) corresponds from the geometrical point of view (shape, size, etc., characteristics that depends entirely of the nature of the product that is inspected). If the possible defect corresponds form the geometrical point of view, then the second stage of detection is applied. This stage verifies whether the possible defect fulfills some "logical" criteria. These criteria are based on grey-level statistics for the corresponding area in question (i.e. between the possible defect area and the surrounding background there is a contrast difference of a certain level).

Artificial intelligence techniques for fault assessment in laminated composite structure: a review

E3S Web of Conferences, 2021

There is a continuous quest in the research community for superior and more accurate methodology for fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of diverse composite structure. This is because, these structures suffer from various nonlinear mode of failures while in service those are recognised as delamination, voids, matrix crack etc. Early detection of failures is what the most research mainly aims at. In this regard, the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques has been proved to be a versatile method for damage assessment. The collective inevitable use of composite materials in various high-performance engineering industries requires preliminary testing (detection, location, and quantification) for damage to these materials in order to improve their integrity and order. The present paper aims to bring out a concise review on various methodologies employed for damage/fault detection in composite materials with a special emphasis on supervised and unsupervised machin...

Exploring the significance of in-process knowledge to composites design and production

2015

This work is an initial attempt to explore how knowledge generated during the fabrication of advanced composite components is relevant to their design and production. Despite their high performance applications their manufacture often relies on a manual process. The aim is to suggest mechanisms to integrate this knowledge to facilitate industry growth. A case study approach was taken to map the learning cycle during product innovation processes. The assumption was that a complete learning cycle leads to production efficiency. Differences in this process for a high performance product in an industrial environment and sculptures in an art fabricators practice were investigated. It was found that the high performance composites industry has an incomplete learning cycle, with in-process knowledge not entering back into concept development. The art fabricators have a complete learning cycle; this has been attributed to their collaborative way of working and the knowledge generated by th...

Development of a Fast Inspection System for Aerospace Composite Materials - the IntACom Project

IntACom is a 3 year project that will develop a prototype robotic scanning system for the rapid, automated Non-Destructive Testing of complex geometry composite components for the aerospace industry. The objective is to achieve a four-fold increase in the throughput of components under test by increased automation of the inspection process through improvements to data presentation and assisted flaw detection. This paper discusses the approach adopted and the progress to date.