Shearography system for the testing of large-scale aircraft components taking into account noncooperative surfaces

ABSTRACT Shearography is an approved and powerfiu! tool for the nondestructive inspection of industrial components with respect tomaterial faults and technical imperfections. An application field of high interest is the in-service inspection of aircraftcomponents. However, the non-cooperative character of the surface of various aircraft components to be inspected has tobe taken into account carefully. This paper describes a complete test facility consisting of a shearographic sensor, adaptedloading equipment for thermal and mechanical stressing and a new evaluation software ensuring a high sensitivity forfault detection. Furtheron a survey ofthe performance ofthe system is given on example of different aircraft componentsthat shows the advantages of shearography in comparison with other inspection techniques, such as ultrasonics andthermography. Keywords: shearography, system lay-out, non-destructive testing, non-cooperative surfaces, loading devices, fault recognition 1. INfRODUCTION