Learning Defects From Aircraft NDT Data

Ultrasonic Testing (UT) is a typical Non-destructive testing (NDT) method for examining the structural components for aircraft production. Manufacturing aircraft made of fiber metal laminates (FML) includes cascaded steps such as placement of aluminum, glass prepreg, adhesive, doublers, stringers, vacuum bagging and curing in an autoclave. Quality control (QC) is performed first at the layup of the component (without stringers) after curing and the quality assessment is visually evaluated. The manually performed examination of anomalies is very time-consuming. In addition, conducted NDT inspection using a manual UT phased array for Glass Reinforced (GLARE®) FML of A380, it lacked the high capacity of data and additionally an evaluation software.