Effective nondestructive testing (NDT) is a necessity for aircraft owners, operators and manufacturers. Aircraft inspections are normally required by law under both civilian and military regulations. The reason why is simple: to protect pilots, crew, passengers, and bystanders from malfunctioning aircraft.

Aerospace non-destructive testing can be used to detect defects such as geometrical faults, e.g. material thickness, welding defects, bondline defects, delamination, wrinkles, porosity, dry areas, foreign objects, cracks or corrosion. This enables customers to ensure their products integrity and reliability while in-service, which allows them to save both time and money when evaluating their products, troubleshooting or carrying out research.

Many aerospace components must be tested to ensure flight safety and regulatory compliance. This can result in a large volume of tests for companies to complete on a regular basis in order to maintain current compliance. To efficiently accomplish high-volume testing—and the recordkeeping it entails—aerospace companies rely on fast, powerful, and easy-to-use modern NDT equipment.

When is NDT used in aerospace?

Safety is the single most critical aspect of aviation. NDT is used throughout a product’s lifecycle – from the qualification of new materials and the designing of new aircraft to in-service inspections of aircraft structures and engines.

During development, researchers may use NDT to help develop lightweight and more flexible materials and structures for aircraft. Engineers will use NDT tools and processes during aircraft testing and certification to test performance and durability and investigate issues.

Aircraft makers use NDT to ensure the quality of materials and joining process during and after manufacturing. Finally, maintenance engineers and technicians will use NDT to inspect in-service aircraft for damage and cracks at regular intervals to guarantee airworthiness and safety.

How is NDT used in aerospace?

The vital aspect of NDT is that the part or the material being tested remains whole and serviceable after the testing.

NDT can generally be split into two areas: surface techniques and sub-surface techniques. Within these two areas is a range of established and trusted tools, such as tap tests conducted with hammers to more recent and advanced technologies, such as 3D computed tomography.