NDTnet 1998 Aug, Vol.3 No.8

Full-Text - Abstract

Laser ultrasonics technology, a non contacting NDT method, has already been widely studied in numerous R&D centres. Aerospatiale and Dassault Aviation have made great advances in this area as they have acquired three years ago an industrial prototype. This system called LUIS which means "Laser Ultrasonic Inspection System" has been developed by the Canadian company Ultra Optec. The system has proved to be highly performing on the foreseen applications among production and maintenance inspection for composite parts. LUIS capabilities are almost unmatched for the testing of parts with a complex geometry, either monolithic, stiffened or sandwich ones.

Most of the evaluation of the system has been made in a laboratory in a research and development environment. To complete this first step and to fully use the potential of LUIS, it has been decided to integrate it in a shelter and to set up on site validation tests. The integration of highly sensitive optical elements in the shelter has been performed with success. Two sets of tests on maintenance and production structures have already been conducted. The first test in maintenance has been performed on a business jet, a Falcon 10 (see figure), in airport maintenance facilities of Dassault Falcon Service. Its prototype composite wing could be inspected with the laser ultrasonics. The ability of our system to inspect parts undismantled has been widely demonstrated on various structures beside the wing such as the stabiliser.

A second phase has been dedicated to the validation of production at Aerospatiale facilities. Aircraft parts with complex geometry which could only be manually inspected have been tested with the laser ultrasonics system, showing easiness to implement the checking.

The potentialities of laser ultrasonics, now widely demonstrated in production and maintenance fields, make it one of the NDT tools able to fit the needs for the structures currently under conception in the design offices.

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Abstract Source:
Book of Abstracts, 7th European Conference on Non-Destructive Testing, 26-29 May 1998, ISBN: 87-986898-0-00

Full-Text Source:
Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Non-Destructive Testing, 26-29 May 1998, ISBN:

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