3 Day Open Conference

Shearography nondestructive testing of aircraft composites
Wednesday 19th November 2008
15.40 - 16.00
Auditorium 2

Shearography nondestructive testing is gaining rapid acceptance as a highly cost effective means for the production inspection of aerospace composites and sandwich structures. Shearography NDT was first commercially introduced by Laser Technology Inc. on the B-2 Stealth Bomber program for inspecting composite honeycomb panels that because of their unique design could not be inspected with ultrasonic C-Scan. Development of digital CCD cameras, the PC and small, high power solid-state lasers have led to dramatic performance improvements in shearography instruments and systems. Automated shearography scan systems can replace UT C-Scan for many applications and achieve throughputs from 10 to 50 times greater. Shearography is currently in use on a wide variety of aircraft including F-22, F-35 JSF, Cessna Citation X, Raytheon Premier I and the NASA Space Shuttle. This presentation will provide a brief background on shearography NDT technology and discuss these and other applic

About the Speaker(s):

John W. Newman
President & CEO
Laser Technology Inc., USA

John Newman is the president and founder of Laser Technology Inc. He holds a Bs. Physics from Lake Forest College where hid did pioneering work in holography from 1968-72. John worked in the nuclear power field before starting Laser Technology Inc. in 1977. At LTI he developed the first combined UT/Holography NDT system for the Pratt & Whitney F100 engine, a technology that has been used on every PWA engine since 1984. John co-invented shearography with Dr. Nakadate at the University of Tokyo.