Wim Van Paepegem

TITLE: A guided tour of NonDestructive Testing (NDT) techniques for fast and reliable quality inspection of industrial parts and components

Fiber reinforced polymers and additive manufactured materials have gained a large interest for use in demanding structural applications due to their high specific stiffness and strength, good chemical resistance and tailorability. Yet, those novel materials might be susceptible to a wide variety of internal damage phenomena, e.g. voids, cracks, delaminations, entrapped foreign objects, residual stresses. In order to assure the manufacturing quality and structural integrity of such materials and parts, there is a clear need for more sensitive and practical non-destructive inspection methodologies. Within the framework of SIM, several projects (DETECT-IV, DETECT-ION, RESON-AM) have been launched in order to develop next-generation inspection technologies. The lecture will focus on (i) the introduction of different NonDestructive Testing (NDT) techniques (ultrasound, thermography, vibrations, etc.), (ii) explain how to select one or the other technique for industrial applications, (iii) show a lot of industrial case studies where NDT methods were used to detect manufacturing defects or in-service damages, and (iv) discuss the potential for application to other material categories.