EPSRC logo

Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/N33843/01
Title: ULTRASONIC WHEEL ARRAY SENSOR INSTRUMENT (UWASI)
Principal Investigator: Drinkwater, Professor B
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
BAE Systems Dynamic Imaging Ltd N D T Solutions Ltd
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Organisation: University of Bristol
Scheme: LINK
Starts: 01 February 2001 Ends: 31 January 2003 Value (£): 159,456
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Instrumentation Eng. & Dev.
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Aerospace, Defence and Marine Manufacturing
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Ultrasonic non-destructive testing is widely used for quality assurance and condition monitoring in a range of engineering industries. In safety critical applications such as routine in-service inspection of aircraft structures, the ultrasonic inspections take a long time and have enormous costs associated with aircraft down time and NDT operator time. This project aims to address these issues by adapting medical array technology and mounting it within a scanning wheel probe. Typical medical array sensors consist of 100 elements and measure about 50mm in width. The increased sensor width, compared with conventional NDT sensors, and the ability to control the ultrasonic beam will increase the coverage and resolution whilst reducing the overall measurement time. By mounting the array in a wheel probe the sensor can be rapidly scanned over the structure. An existing pc based generic ultrasonic instrument would be extended to handle the interfacing and control of the array system. This instrument is capable of supporting advanced signal processing algorithms, which would be used to handle the large amount of data produced by the array sensor. In this way complex ultrasound data can be automatically processed to generate simple output data relating to diagnostic features or defects.
Key Findings
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Potential use in non-academic contexts
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Impacts
Description This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Summary
Date Materialised
Sectors submitted by the Researcher
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
Project URL:  
Further Information:  
Organisation Website: http://www.bris.ac.uk