Automatic shearography inspection system for helicopter rotor blades

Thomas Walz; Andreas Ettemeyer

doi:10.1117/12.305050

31 March 1998 Automatic shearography inspection system for helicopter rotor blades

Thomas Walz, Andreas Ettemeyer

Proceedings Volume 3397, Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, and Aerospace Hardware II; (1998) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.305050
Event: Non-Destructive Evaluation Techniques for Aging Infrastructure and Manufacturing, 1998, San Antonio, TX, United States

Abstract

Helicopter rotor blades are highly sophisticated products composed of a variety of materials and components and therefore, 100 percent quality control has to be assured. Therefore, the French helicopter producer, Eurocopter S.A., Paris, has installed a system for automatic and 100 percent inspection of rotor blades on structural defects. In this system, laser shearography is used as an inspection technique. The rotor blades are mounted in a vacuum chamber and loaded with a relative pressure difference. At this load, bonding and structural defects show up as tiny deformations of the surface and are recorded with two shearography cameras, positioned on both sides of the rotor blade. After each measurement, they are automatically moved to the next inspection position. In this way, the entire rotor blade is automatically inspected in several measuring steps. As this helicopter blade inspection system is the first automatic production control system based on laser shearography in Europe, this application is an important step in bringing shearography techniques into production control. In this paper, the complete inspection system is presented.

Citation Download Citation

Thomas Walz and Andreas Ettemeyer "Automatic shearography inspection system for helicopter rotor blades", Proc. SPIE 3397, Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, and Aerospace Hardware II, (31 March 1998); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.305050

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