3-DIMENSIONAL ULTRASONIC-IMAGING OF DEFECTS AND DAMAGE IN COMPOSITE-MATERIALS

Based on the analysis of ultrasonic A-scans, a scanning system was dev eloped to construct a pseudo three-dimensional image of discontinuity and damage in composite materials. Special echo detection techniques w ere successfully developed and applied for detecting delaminations due to low velocity impact on a thin composite plate and planar inclusion s in thick plates. The same imaging procedure was applied in both case s. Bull volume evaluation of a defect/damage map was practically possi ble by developing an archival storage database system built with an ef ficient compression scheme and a pattern matching algorithm that is be st suited for the particular scanning system.