Nondestructive imaging of hidden defects in aircraft sandwich composites using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy

Abstract Aircraft sandwich composites are superior to ordinary composites and have been largely used in the manufacture of military aircraft. This study attempts to investigate the efficacy of terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) imaging technology in detecting hidden defects in aircraft glass fiber (GF) sandwich composites. The defects of various sizes, such as debonding, delamination, and multi-delamination, at different depths in GF A-sandwich structure composites with foam core, C-sandwich structure composites with honeycomb core, and sheet-to-sheet cementing structure composites were evaluated. The THz frequency-domain amplitude and time-domain amplitude imaging algorithms were used to visualize the defects simulated by ultrathin double-layer Teflon inserts. And the suitable image processing methods which include wavelet-based fusion and multiscale edge representation were employed. With a combination of high-resolution THz C-scan and B-scan imaging, both the horizontal size and location, and the vertical depth and thickness of the defects were obtained in three dimensions. This study experimentally demonstrated that THz imaging technology can clearly detect various hidden defects in aircraft GF sandwich composites through reflection or transmission imaging mode.