Digital Shearography and vibration excitation for NDT of aircraft components

Digital Shearography is a laser based inspection method, capable of determining minute surface displacement gradients in response to an applied stress. The non-contacting technique is based on interferometric principles, and produces whole field results. As a result the method has been adapted for defect detection purposes of high value components in the NDT/E industry. In order to obtain an object’s surface displacement gradient when applying Digital Shearography, the object has to be stressed. This paper investigates the use of vibration excitation as a stressing technique for the inspection of selected composite aircraft components. The theory of digital Shearography is presented, the inspections using a piezo based vibration probe is outlined, and the results obtained are displayed. A discussion of the results obtained concludes the paper.