Hand-Held Nondestructive Inspection (NDI) Scanner for Composite Missile Systems

Future missile systems will use composite materials to enable higher performance. These composite materials produce higher strength and lower weight than traditional metal cases, but are susceptible to defects that are not present in the metal cases. Furthermore, defects in these composite materials are frequently hidden below the surface making them difficult to find through a traditional visual inspection of the missile. Since these composite materials are sensitive to impact damage, there is a need for a method to quickly and nondestructively analyze a missile after it has suffered an impact. Such an inspection system will be required for the Navy to truly adopt and use missiles with composite cases. Cybernet proposes to leverage our existing electronic shearography-based sensor head to develop an inspection system for these composite missiles. The Navy’s current requirements call for a portable system that can be hand-held by the operator to inspect a missile after impact damage may have occurred. We will leverage our existing visual tracking technologies to compensate for any unwanted motion between the sensor head and the test specimen. This compensation will be required to make a truly hand-held device.