Non-Destructive Inspection and Relationships to Aircraft Design and Materials.

Because the existence of poor communications and limited rate of integration among materials technologists, design engineers and NDI experts was realized by AGARD, the Structures and Materials Panel took the initiative of organizing a Specialists Meeting at which 20 papers were presented. These papers covered the state-of-the-art for NDI methods for materials of interest to the aerospace industry, the weak points of some methods used at present, the trends of application of known methods and a few new methods. The situation does not appear to be satisfactory in the fields of composite materials and of ceramic materials for turbine engine hot components where much work remains to be done. In the area of metallic materials, the trend is towards automatic inspection, development of smart sensors and in-process inspection. A few methods low angle neutron scattering, digitalized infra-red thermography, tomography, acoustical emission, multifrequency eddy currents, very high frequency ultrasonic beam scattering deserve appropriate consideration. Author