Guided waves provide for us a potential inspection technique for many structures in aging and new aircraft. The use of many guided wave "modes" can offer special sensitivity to many different defect types. In aging aircraft, techniques have been developed to use guided waves for the inspection of adhesive delaminations in the lap splice joint and tear strap. Furthermore, research is underway to detect and characterize corrosive degradation in aircraft skin. Also techniques for detecting delaminations of composite doubler repair patches have been developed. For composite honeycomb structures present in many new aircraft, a guided wave scanning method is being studied to find delaminations between the skin and core.

An overview of the guided wave inspection methods for different aircraft structures will be presented, along with experimental data. Also, basic guided wave theory will be discussed with an emphasis on mode selection concepts.