Autonomous Inspection and Repair of Aircraft Composite Structures

Composite Repair of Timber Structures

Nondestructive Inspection of Composite Structures: Methods and Practice

Composite materials are widely used in a number of industrial sectors from aviation, space, to boat building, automotive, and sports goods. In recent years composite structures have seen a substantial increase of their use in the new generation of airplanes. The nondestructive testing and inspection of composite structures, both for manufacturing quality assurance and for in-service damage dete...

Assessing Transport Aircraft Inspection Strategies

Complex aircraft require periodic maintenance checks to assess needed repairs for continued vehicle availability. However, such checks are expensive and the associated aircraft downtime can reduce fleet mission effectiveness. The United States Air Force plans to consolidate the time-based (isochronal) C-5 aircraft major inspection activities for eight C-5 home stations into three locations. Iso...

Deformation Characteristics of Composite Structures

The composites provide design flexibility because many of them can be moulded into complex shapes. The carbon fibre-reinforced epoxy composites exhibit excellent fatigue tolerance and high specific strength and stiffness which have led to numerous advanced applications ranging from the military and civil aircraft structures to the consumer products. However, the modelling of the beams undergoin...

Automation for Nondestructive Inspection of Aircraft

We discuss the motivation and an architectural framework for using small mobile robots as automated aids to operators of nondestructive inspection (NDI) equipment. We review the need for aircraft skin inspection, and identify the constraints in commercial airlines operations that make small mobile robots the most attractive alternative for automated aids for NDI procedures. We describe the desi...