Automated NDT analysis and sentencing of aerospace composites

With the introduction of all-composite aircraft structures, it is rapidly becoming apparent that conventional NDT analysis will not be sufficient to cope with the expected production throughput, especially when nearly a Terabyte of data is acquired for each aircraft. It will be necessary to substantially increase the number of NDT analysts or, alternatively, the analysis process could be automated. This paper presents the results from an application of customised automated analysis and sentencing algorithms to data acquired on a real civil-aircraft component. A reference-scan methodology is fundamental to this method, in order to concentrate on the differences between the production scan and that of a pseudo-perfect component (the Reference Scan). Rule-based acceptance criteria used in the sentencing process are derived from the specific NDT specification for the component and are embedded in the Reference Scan. The paper presents various problems arising from implementing the more subjective operator analysis methods. Solutions to these problems are also discussed.