Development of an integrated system for identifying provenance of composite parts and enhanced safety-critical test

**Vision:** We will apply novel techniques developed for medical imaging to Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) of critical composite components in aircraft to transform the sensitivity and speed of testing, and hence transform maintenance economics.

The long-term intent is to develop a new approach that can be applied in manufacture and routine maintenance.

The vision is to develop NDT technologies that will be adopted by prime aircraft component manufacturers, and this will then drive adoption in the through-life maintenance programme to deliver value in terms of reduced manufacturing costs and reduced through-life cost-of-test.

**Objectives:**

1\. To deliver a demonstrator for a new type of imaging modality for NDT of composites for aviation applications.

2\. The National Composite Centre ('NCC' a UK Research Technology Organisation) will work with Adaptix to integrate micro-fiducials (tiny specks whose position can be imaged) into composites and validate them for aviation use.

3\. The National Physical Laboratory ('NPL' a UK RTO as Contractor) will work with Adaptix to validate that:

3.1 The micro-fiducials do not affect critical physical properties; and,

3.2 That imaging is capable of better identifying the target failure modes than existing inspection modalities.

**Focus:** We will focus on identifying delamination and wrinkles as these are the failure-modes with the greatest safety and economic relevance. In order to drive adoption, we will work with a specific early adopter and on high-value composite part to illustrate the value to an aerospace Prime.

**Innovation:** We will deliver an imaging system to image composite structures tagged with micro-fiducials which will go beyond laminography in the ability to detect key failure modes.

We aim to prove that the inclusion of micro-fiducials can enhance the ability to detect failure modes without adversely affecting the physical properties of a device, and in doing so overcome objections to the use of the technique.