Open Access

ARTICLE

Detection of Cracks in Aerospace Turbine Disks Using an Ultrasonic Phased Array C-scan Device

Qian Xu^1,*, Haitao Wang^1,2, Zhenhua Chen³, Zhigang Huang³, Pan Hu¹

1 College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210000, China
2 Key Laboratory of Non-Destructive ‘Testing and Monitoring’ Technology for High-Speed Transport Facilities of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210000, China
3 Key Laboratory of Nondestructive Testing of Ministry of Education Nanchang Hang Kong University, Nanchang, 341000, China

* Corresponding Author: Qian Xu. Email:

Structural Durability & Health Monitoring 2021, 15(1), 39-52. https://doi.org/10.32604/sdhm.2021.014815

Received 01 November 2020; Accepted 21 December 2020; Issue published 22 March 2021

Abstract

Crack detection in an aerospace turbine disk is essential for aircraft- quality detection. With the unique circular stepped structure and superalloy material properties of aerospace turbine disk, it is difficult for the traditional ultrasonic testing method to perform efficient and accurate testing. In this study, ultrasound phased array detection technology was applied to the non-destructive testing of aviation turbine disks: (i) A phased array ultrasonic c-scan device for detecting aerospace turbine disk cracks (PAUDA) was developed which consists of phased array ultrasonic, transducers, a computer, a displacement encoder, and a rotating scanner; (ii) The influence of the detection parameters include frequency, wave-type, and elements number of the ultrasonic phased array probe on the detection results on the near-surface and the far surface of the aerospace turbine disk is analyzed; (iii) Specimens with flat-bottom-hole (FBH) defects were scanned by the developed PAUDA and the results were analyzed and compared with the conventional single probe ultrasonic water immersion testing. The experiment shows that by using the ultrasonic phased array c-scan to scan the turbine disk the accuracy of the detection can be significantly improved which is of greater accuracy and higher efficiency than traditional immersion testing.

---

Keywords

---