Inspection of single crystal aerospace components with ultrasonic arrays

Single crystal metal alloys are used extensively in the manufacture of jet engine components for their excellent mechanical properties at elevated temperatures. The increasing use of these materials and demand for longer operational life and improved reliability motivates the requirement to have capable NDE methods available. Ultrasonic arrays are well established at detecting sub-surface defects however these methods are not currently suitable to the inspection of single crystal components due to their high elastic anisotropy causing directional variation in ultrasonic waves. In this paper a model of wave propagation in anisotropic material is used to correct an ultrasonic imaging algorithm and is applied to single crystal test specimens. The orientation of the crystal in a specimen must be known for this corrected-algorithm; therefore a crystal orientation method is also presented that utilizes surface skimming longitudinal waves under a 2D array. The work detailed in this paper allows an ultrasonic 2D array to measure the orientation of a single crystal material and then perform accurate volumetric imaging to detect and size defects.