Nondestructive testing of aircraft components through ultrasonic testing is well established as one of the industry's benchmark techniques. It's capability to penetrate both thin and thick material provides arguably the best information to inspectors on subsurface faults. However, there are two basic drawbacks to its use: its difficulty to employ and its slow speed. Real-time C-scan solves both of these issues while maintaining high quality subsurface information. Cracking, corrosion, voids, delaminations and impact damage can be observed in 1/30 second. The basis for this technology is a novel two-dimensional imaging array that creates immediate, high-resolution images of subsurface faults. The latest developments of the technique include commercial introduction of a through-transmission scanning product which can inspect large structures, as well as significant progress in the development of a hand held device which produces instantaneous high quality imagery of defects in reflection over an area as the user simply holds a probe up to the target. This work is funded in part by the Navy SEW "Fasttrack" program.
