DefinePK

Abstract

Ultrasonic testing is a common Non-Destructive Test (NDT) technique used especially in flaw detection for various material such as metal, plastic and composite. However, detecting flaw on a composite material is likely more difficult because of its non-homogenous characteristics. An ultrasonic scanning unit is developed in previous research focusing at the inspection on a composite material. In this paper, the improvement and modification to the system is revised and discussed in term of system configuration, specification, controls and also inspection results. The major improvement is made on the heart of the machine as the scanning mechanism is changed from using an air-coupled transducer to an immersion transducer. Current immersion transducer used is 2.25MHz which is highly recommended for a composite material. A combination of Arduino board and a self-developed graphical user interface (GUI) are used in order to control the position of the transducer and to run the inspection process. The data is acquired from pulse receiver to the computer for further data processing and interpretation. The machine is tested with fibre glass composite laminates (FGCL) sample with holes as artificial defect.