Advanced NDT&E Techniques for Aero-materials and Structures in China

This paper was focused on the review of advanced NDT&E techniques for aero-materials and structures (AMS) because of the increasingly much high importance of NDT&E and the developments and applications of new advanced AMS. The new progress and practical applications of advanced NDT&E techniques for aero-raw materials, light-weight metal structures and composite materials, etc., were summarized. Multi-channel ultrasonic automated scanning technique with high resolution is very effective for reliable NDT of aero-tubes. High resolution and high sensitivity ultrasonic method and PUDE provide powerful approaches for NDT&E of light-weight metal structures, such as solid state, electronic beam, TLP, braze and laser welded structures. The advanced automated ultrasonic scanning imaging technique, whose resolution and dead-zone can reach a single ply (approximately 0.125 mm), brings the very practical robust ability in fast NDT&E of aero-composite materials and large-scale structures. Its efficiency of NDT for large-scale structures can be increased 20 times compared with traditional single-channel ultrasonic scanning technique. The visual NDT&E techniques with high resolution, sensitivity, detectability and flexibility as well as reliability are the appreciate methods for aero-AMS at the present and in the future.