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Ultrasonic Arrays
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Eddy-current Arrays
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Although multi-element arrays have been used for at least two decades in medical ultrasound, their practical use in Non-destructive testing has been delayed due to their complexity and the difficulty of coupling them to irregular-shaped structures. However, the NDE Group at QinetiQ felt in the early 1990s that it was time to move this technology into NDT and produced a technical specification for such an array. Various probe manufacturers with medical array experience were asked to quote for making the array and the rest is history!
Much of the effort involved in introducing arrays was concentrated on software development and speeding up relatively unsophisticated instrumentation to give the speed increase that was desired. All of this work was undertaken as part of the on-going developments of ANDSCAN and the multi-element array capability was finally released in ANDSCAN 2000.
Two probe manufacturers were contracted to produce arrays compatible with the ANDSCAN 2000 software, GE and Diagnostic Sonar Ltd. Arrays at 5 MHz and 7.5 MHz were developed for large-area scanning of carbon-fibre composite structures. Subsequent development with Diagnostic Sonar Ltd was aimed at the inspection of large metallic multi-layered structures such as aging aircraft.
Multi-element ultrasonic arrays for rapid lap-joint inspection 2nd Aging 1998.pdf
High Frequency Array Technology - Lines - 3rd Aging 1999.pdf
Rapid Large-area Inspection using Arrays NDT 2003.pdf
Author: R A Smith.
Copyright © 2004 QinetiQ Ltd. All rights reserved.
Revised: January 20, 2004
