Inspection of helicopter rotor blades with the help of guided waves and "turning modes": Experimental and finite element analysis

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2012-07-01
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Chakrapani, Sunil
Dayal, Vinay
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Dayal, Vinay
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Center for Nondestructive Evaluation

The Center for Nondestructive Evaluation at Iowa State has been involved in the use of nondestructive evaluation testing (NDT) technologies to: assess the integrity of a substance, material or structure; assess the criticality of any flaws, and to predict the object’s remaining serviceability. NDT technologies used include ultrasonics and acoustic emissions, electromagnetic technologies, computer tomography, thermal imaging, and others.

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In October of 1985 the CNDE was approved by the State Board of Regents after it had received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.

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Center for Nondestructive Evaluation
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Modern helicopter rotor blades constructed of composite materials offer significant inspection challenges, particularly at inner structures, where geometry and differing material properties and anisotropy make placement of the probing energy difficult. This paper presents an application of Lamb waves to these structures, where mode conversion occurs at internal geometric discontinuities. These additional modes were found to successfully propagate to the targeted regions inside the rotor and back out, allowing evaluation of the structure. A finite element model was developed to simulate wave propagation and mode conversion in the structure and aid in identifying the signals received in the laboratory experiment. A good correlation between numerical and experimental results was observed.

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Copyright 2013 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.

This article appeared in AIP Conference Proceedings 1511 (2012): 1425–1432 and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789209.

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Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 UTC 2013