A Handheld Sensor for Amorphous Coating Integrity Evaluation

In the current SBIR program, AlphaSense aimed at developing a novel, handheld, non-destructive sensor to evaluate the integrity of Naval Advanced Amorphous Coatings (NAAC) in real time. In phase I, we have proven the feasibility of using the cavity perturbation technique to detect different types of defects present in thermal-sprayed testing coupons. Specifically, we optimized the sensor probe design and implemented an alpha- version sensor hardware. We measured the perturbed cavity resonances by reference and defect coatings, and correlated the sensor data with the material microstructures. We also identified methods to further enhance the sensor performances in detecting defects present in the coating/substrate interface and substrate. Phase II will be focusing on the optimization of the sensor system to improve its performance in terms of sensitivity, dynamic range, and interrogation depth, and the implementation of a compact, portable, relatively inexpensive and field testable prototype.