An investigation has been made of the potential of pulsed - transient thermography for identifying the location of fixtures beneath aircraft skins to facilitate accurate automated assembly operations. Experimental studies have been made of 1.6 mm thick aluminium skins and both 2 mm and 4 mm thick carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite skins over both aluminium and composite struts, representing fixtures. For the thin CFRP case (i.e. 2 mm skin), the strut behind the skin can be easily imaged and centre line location determined to an accuracy of 0.5 mm. Greater difficulty is experienced in the thick CFRP (i.e. 4 mm skin) and aluminium cases caused by, in the first case, the thickness of the skin material, and in the second instance, the sensitivity to the thermal contact resistance between the surfaces. For the aluminium case, modelling results show a thermal contact resistance between two high thermal conductivity surfaces to have far greater effect on thermal image degradation than between two lower thermal conductivity CFRP surfaces. A modest loading of such parts, however, reduces the effect of the thermal contact resistance and enables a sub-skin strut to be imaged and located to a similar accuracy to that achieved with the 2 mm CFPR skin positioned over the CFRP strut.
Through skin imaging for aircraft assembly using pulsed-transient thermography
Abbildung durch die Außenhaut von Luftfahrtkomponenten mittels transienter Impulsthermographie
2004
10 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 3 Tabellen, 9 Quellen
(Nicht paginiert)
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Datenträger
Englisch
Transient thermography as a through skin imaging techique for aircraft assembly
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