Agenda
1300-1305: Welcome, Intro & Purpose – Steve McKee (OSD-MR) Presentation
1305-1309: Administrative Notes – Debbie Lilu (NCMS)
1309-1335: Ultrasound Mode Imaging (UMI) monitoring system – Gregg Baumeier (NAVSEA) Presentation
1335-1400: Composite Heat Damage Evaluation in Naval Aircraft – Justin Massey (FRC-SW) Presentation
1300-1425: NDI Intelligence Augmentation – Dr. Eric Lindgren (AFRL) Presentation
1425-1450: Composite pi-joint Inspection System and spot weld inspection system – Dr. Steve Shepard (Thermal Wave Imaging, Inc.)
1450-1500: Wrap-Up / Survey – Steve McKee (OSD-MR) Presentation
Minutes
Event: On 30 August 2022, the Joint Technology Exchange Group (JTEG), in coordination with the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS), hosted a virtual forum on “Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI)”.
Purpose: The purpose of this forum was to discuss the challenges and solutions, research and development, and implementation of NDI capabilities in support of DoD sustainment.
Welcome: Steve McKee, OSD-MR, welcomed everyone to the forum and provided a brief introduction of the presenters and emphasized the significance, challenges and impact that NDI innovations have within the DoD sustainment community.
Administrative: 52 people attended. This was an open forum. The presentations, along with questions and answers, were conducted through Zoom Gov. This was the first time we used ZoomGov which provided a very useful chat capability for comments and Q&A. Unfortunately, some people had trouble finding the ZoomGov link and the JTEG website still had the old Adobe Connect link, so some participants went to that link and had to be brought back in.
Ultrasound Mode Imaging (UMI) monitoring system – Gregg Baumeier, NAVSEA, explained how UMI technology was being developed to monitor Navy ships for Real-time hull defect growth. He stated the pilot program objectives are to learn about the at-sea environment effects on analysis and hardware, demonstrate that UMI can detect hull cracks underway in an area of known concern, and to leverage the MSC Pilot as a bridge to use in all Navy ships. Hardware and software are both performing well underway. He then described the ultrasonic mode imaging technology and how the piezoelectric sensors perform passive flaw growth detection. He also discussed the NASA SBIR Phase II Project to develop innovative sensor designs, advanced signal processing electronics, wavelet transform image analysis software, and prototype UMI system for testing in the USNS NEWPORT, to be installed about March 2023.
Usage of FTIR for Thermal Damage Inspection on Composite Aircraft – Justin Massey, (FRC-SW), described the costly repairs and unnecessary replacement purchases resulting from heat damage and the inability to inspect the damage properly. He presented the handheld Agilent Technologies Flexscan 4200 Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectrometry as a solution. It is a portable diffuse reflectance FTIR unit that can be used to determine surface chemical composition changes due to heat damage. These changes will be correlated with mechanical test results for Flexscan calibration. Boeing Commercial has developed this technology for the 787 Dreamliner. The FT-IR has been adopted by USN since 2015 to inspect Carbon/Epoxy composite for incipient thermal damage and has been used as a solution for 3 different aircraft programs experiencing over $60M savings in aircraft and component repair. FT-IR is now used as a workhorse technology to provide inspection of thermal damage on composites and is currently being developed for 3 more aircraft programs. He also noted that the current FT-IR is no longer supported by OEM, and a new FT-IR (Agilent 4300 Handheld FTIR) is being developed as a drop-in replacement.
NDI Intelligence Augmentation – Dr. Eric Lindgren (AFRL) defined intelligence augmentation and described how heuristic-based algorithms, model-based algorithms, and machine learning (ML)/Artificial Intelligence (AI) are all in use today. He then listed the pros and cons of AI/ML and the potential for automated or assisted defect analysis. He described previous successes such as the C-141 weep hole crack detection and the C-130 lower forward spar cap and highlighted some of the challenges to include structural complexity/variability and validation of capability. He concluded by stating that combining heuristic-based algorithms, model-based algorithms, and ML/AI will increase chances for success. Implementation must consider the availability and volume of data, and don’t forget that human review is still a valuable asset.
Q&A – A Q&A occurred after each briefer finished their presentation. Questions and answers will be posted on the JTEG website with these minutes.
Closing Comments: Steve McKee thanked the presenters and participants for their attendance and all the work being done to support NDI innovations in support of DoD sustainment operations.
Action Items:
- Obtain copies of remaining cleared presentations once they are approved to post to a public website, and post to the JTEG website at https://jteg.ncms.org/.
Next JTEG Meeting: The next scheduled JTEG virtual forum is 27 September 2022, 1:00 – 3:00 pm EST. The topic is “Corrosion, Detection, Prevention, and Control”.
POC this action is Ray Langlais, rlanglais@lmi.org, (571) 633-8019