Development of a vibroacoustic system for non-destructive test in aerospace structures

The present work describes an alternative way (to ultrasound) to check the existence of superficial flaws in sandwich panels used in the aerospace industry, based in a technique inspired in the well known "tap test". In this case, however, a non-impulsive excitation is provided by a especial transducer and the acoustic response is captured with a microphone. Correlation and Deconvolution techniques are used in order to assess the system's vibroacoustic impulse response and generate a "failure" map after post-processing the results. Results and aspects in regard to its implementation and automation are described in the paper.