Helicopter rotor blades are highly sophisticated products composed of a variety of materials and components and therefore, 100 percent quality control has to be assured. Therefore, the French helicopter producer, Eurocopter S.A., Paris, has installed a system for automatic and 100 percent inspection of rotor blades on structural defects. In this system, laser shearography is used as an inspection technique. The rotor blades are mounted in a vacuum chamber and loaded with a relative pressure difference. At this load, bonding and structural defects show up as tiny deformations of the surface and are recorded with two shearography cameras, positioned on both sides of the rotor blade. After each measurement, they are automatically moved to the next inspection position. In this way, the entire rotor blade is automatically inspected in several measuring steps. As this helicopter blade inspection system is the first automatic production control system based on laser shearography in Europe, this application is an important step in bringing shearography techniques into production control. In this paper, the complete inspection system is presented.
Automatic shearography inspection system for helicopter rotor blades
Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, and Aerospace Hardware II ; 1998 ; San Antonio,TX,USA
Proc. SPIE ; 3397
1998-03-31
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
Automatic shearography inspection system for helicopter rotor blades [3397-28]
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