An apparatus comprising an array of polymer-based capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers positioned on a substrate. The substrate may be at least substantially transparent to ionizing radiation, be flexible, and/or have walls positioned thereon to protect the transducers.

A method for ultrasonic inspection of composite parts includes providing a composite part to be inspected with a plurality of layers, determining the runtime and/or attenuation of an ultrasonic signal propagating through the composite part to be inspected, providing the runtime and/or attenuation of the ultrasonic signal propagating through a reference composite part, subtracting the runtime and/or attenuation of the ultrasonic signal in the reference composite part from the runtime and/or attenuation of the ultrasonic signal in the composite part to be inspected, or vice versa, and determining from the result of the subtraction one or more missing and/or additional layers in the inspected composite part. The difference of the runtime and/or attenuation of the ultrasonic signal in the inspected composite part relative to the reference composite part, and/or the difference of the thickness between the composite part and the reference part, is/are visualized.

Operating parameters are selected for inspecting a structure. Selecting the operating parameters includes exciting broadband ultrasonic guided waves in a multilayered structure, acquiring data corresponding to the sensed broadband ultrasonic guided waves in the multilayered structure, selecting one or more narrow frequency bands based on the acquired data, and inspecting the multilayered structure using ultrasonic guided waves in the one or more narrow frequency bands. In some examples, the data is acquired by an inspection tool capable of sensing the broadband ultrasonic guided waves in the multilayered structure.

Methods and devices are provided for analyzing a tubular structure including at least two electromagnetic-acoustic transducers (EMAT) and, called sensors, attachable or attached in, on or in the vicinity of the tubular structure; and computation and/or memory resources, that are accessed locally and/or remotely and that are configured to determine, for the pair of sensors, a function representing the impulse response of the tubular structure on the basis of the diffuse acousto-elastic noise present in the structure. Developments describe the use of rings supporting the sensors; translation and/or rotation movements; permanent or temporary installations; hinged rings; various computation modes, e.g., intercorrelation, a passive inverse filter, or correlation of the coda of the correlation; the use of artificial noise sources, imaging (e.g., tomography) for determining the existence of one or more defects in the structure. Software aspects are described.

The damage assessment device 16 includes a trolley 4 with a platform 43 carrying a sensor mounting 11 for various non-destructive testing sensors 10 and an additional depth sensor 13 for estimating the depth of a dent, a flexible and partially ferromagnetic rails 2 in order to keep the trolley 4 on the surface of an aircraft structure and allowing the trolley 4 to move perpendicular to a linear scanning axis, formed by the bridge 41 of the trolley 4, and the possibility for remote-control the device via an external control station 14.

Embodiments described herein utilize Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI) scan data obtained during a process performed on a surface of a structure to update a location of an NDI scanner on the surface. A subsurface feature within the structure is detected based on the NDI scan data, which are correlated with pre-defined position data for the subsurface feature. A measured location of the NDI scanner on the surface is corrected based on the pre-defined position data for the subsurface feature.

A computer system is provided for processing ultrasonic data of an ultrasonic probe applied to an area of an aircraft component that includes carbon fiber reinforced polymer. C-scan data is obtained and a preliminary mesh is defined over the C-scan data by taking into account the underlying structural or mechanical characteristics of the analyzed component. The mesh is further refined and data gathered for each mesh cell. A heat map is generated based on the mesh.

An aviation component inspection device includes a camera, a display, an input device, and a computer. The camera is configured to capture images of an aviation component under inspection. The computer is configured to receive an image from the camera, evaluate the image with one or more machine-learning aviation component-detection models. Each machine-learning aviation component-detection model is previously trained to output at least one confidence score indicating a confidence that a corresponding aviation component is present in the image. The computer is configured to present, via the display, a list of candidate aviation components based on corresponding confidence scores output by the one or more machine-learning aviation component-detection models, and add data previously-associated with a selected candidate aviation component from the list to a digital inspection report responsive to receiving user verification, via the input device, confirming the selected candidate aviation component is present in the image.

Multi-centric radius focusing is used to inspect a radiused surface of a radiused part having a varying radius without mechanically adjusting the array sensor. A plurality of focal laws are designed to electronically steer and focus ultrasound at respective focal points corresponding to centers of curvature of a simulated radiused surface having a varying radius. The mechanical probe that carries the array sensor is located to two physical places that are outside of the radiused area and have a spatial relationship that varies less than the radius of the radiused surface varies. As the probe is moved along the radiused part, the probe maintains the array sensor at a constant location relative to the radiused part. As the array sensor scans the radiused part, the array sensor is electronically adjusted to focus at the respective focal points in sequence.

The system includes an ultrasonic measuring device including ultrasonic transmitters and ultrasonic receivers, the ultrasonic measuring device carrying out ultrasonic measurements on a zone of interest of the component divided according to a gridding including cells, and carrying out the measurements cell after cell with the generation, by all the ultrasonic transmitters, of an ultrasonic signal that is sent into the component, and the measurement, by all the ultrasonic receivers, of the amplitude of the ultrasonic signal reflected by the cell in question of the component, a unit for computing, for all of the cells of the gridding, the sum of the amplitudes of all the measurements carried out for that cell, and a processing part for deducing the presence or absence of one or more defects. The system detects all the defects existing in the zone of interest of the component, whatever their orientation may be.