Laser excitation and fully non-contact sensing ultrasonic propagation imaging system for damage evaluation

Abstract

Various types of damages occur in aerospace, mechanical and many other engineering structures, and a reliable nondestructive evaluation technique is essential to detect any possible damage at the initiation phase. Ultrasound has been widely used but the conventional contact ultrasonic inspection techniques are not suitable for mass and couplant sensitive structures and are relatively slow. This study presents a fully non-contact hybrid laser ultrasonic generation and piezoelectric air-coupled transducer (ACT)/laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) sensing technique combined with ultrasonic wave propagation imaging (UWPI), ultrasonic spectral imaging (USI) and wavelet-transformed ultrasonic propagation imaging (WUPI) algorithms to extract defect-sensitive features aimed at performing a thorough diagnosis of damage. Optimization enables improved performance efficiency of ACT and LDV to be used as receivers for non-contact hybrid laser ultrasonic propagation imaging (UPI) system as shown from the experimental results in this study. Real fatigue closed surface micro crack on metal structure was detected using hybrid laser ultrasonic generation/ACT sensing system, with size detection accuracy as high as 96%. Impact damages on carbon fiber reinforced plastic composite wing-box specimen were detected and localized using hybrid laser ultrasonic generation/LDV sensing system.