Non-Destructive Evaluation of Aerospace Composites at the Manufacturing Stage

Traditionally, Non-Destructive Evaluations (NDE) is deployed at post-manufacturing stage of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) in aerospace where the finished components are repaired/rejected (scraped) if they are found to have defects. However, a knowledge of semi-finished components gained through deployment of NDE at intermediate process stages would allow detection of the source of defects and taking in-situ corrective process adjustment steps, such as parameters refinement for fiber weaving, fabric lay-up, resin infusion, etc. This prevents expenditure of time and costs on manufacturing of flawed aerospace components which are typically very large in size and made up of a considerable amount of raw material.
In view of the strengths and weaknesses of different NDE modalities, this EngD project aims to:
a) Study the manufacturing of typical CFRP products of the industrial partner (Spirit AeroSystems)
b) Identify the nature of common process defect types, location, and size,
c) Investigate the strengths and shortcomings of different NDE modalities for each manufacturing stage in a comparative study through modelling and experiments
d) Provide possible innovative alteration of NDE modality, deployment, and sensors for improved detection performance at each stage