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Tomography Applied To Lamb Wave Contact Scanning Nondestructive Evaluation, James Christopher P. Mckeon

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The aging world-wide aviation fleet requires methods for accurately predicting the presence of structural flaws that compromise airworthiness in aircraft structures. Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) provides the means to assess these structures quickly, quantitatively, and noninvasively. Ultrasonic guided waves, Lamb waves, are useful for evaluating the plate and shell structures common in aerospace applications. The amplitude and time-of-flight of Lamb waves depend on the material properties and thickness of a medium, and so they can be used to detect any areas of differing thickness or material properties which indicate flaws. By scanning sending and receiving transducers over an aircraft, large sections …