Composite materials are currently widely used in the manufacture of aircraft parts due to their excellent mechanical features.
However, since the manufacturing processes of these parts do not assure the inexistence of defects in the manufactured parts a non-destructive inspection of all the manufactured parts is required, subjecting them to ultrasonic signals to detect defects, especially porosity and delamination defects.
If any reparable defect is detected during inspection it is repaired, and a corrective action is then established in the part manufacturing process so that the defect does not re-occur. It must be taken into account that not all defects are reparable since it may occur that a defect or a group of them generate “unserviceable parts”, according to unacceptable criteria for size, occupied area or type of inspection of the area in which they are located.
When this process is individually applied to each manufactured part, the scope of the measures used in the manufacturing process is merely corrective, being impossible to prevent the high inspection and repair costs generated in the majority of manufacture.
The process in turn requires parts or areas of the parts to be inspected where the likeliness of defects may be very low, with the subsequent cost increase.
Therefore additional control and detection processes are required, and the present invention is focused on this demand.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds