As nondestructive examination (NDE) continues to evolve as an inspection discipline, so the technologies of NDE evolve to meet new challenges in terms of materials and material geometries to be inspected.
Portable phased array ultrasonic testing systems hit the market nearly 20 years ago, and today the latest generation of these tools delivers better amplitude resolution, faster data acquisition rates, and advanced data analysis in a single easy-to-handle package.
Olympus announced the addition of a motorized steerable scanner to its line of solutions for ultrasonic and phased array testing. The field-tested, remote-controlled SteerROVER™ scanner is the most ad-vanced and versatile motorized scanner offered by Olympus.
On April 20, three days after a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700 experienced an engine failure due to a fractured fan blade, resulting in the death of a passenger, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive that requires operators of CFM56-7B engines with more than 30,000 flight cycles to perform a one-time ultrasonic inspection of all 24 fan blades to detect cracking.
Short range guided wave testing (SRGWT) is an application of guided ultrasonic sound waves using special types of probes. When the guided waves hit the discontinuities, the mode converted sound is reflected back and received by the transducer.
Composite components are used extensively in the design of new generation aircraft. During manufacturing, the aircraft’s structural components must be inspected with ultrasonic technology to ensure their integrity.