Nondestructive Evaluation of Micro Casting Products for Aerospace

The University of Naples Federico II has provided a consultancy to the E.M.A. Europea Microfusioni Aerospaziali SpA company about the general aspects concerning the metrological problem applied to their micro casting aerospace products.
The following outcome was obtained:

Design and implementation of a control system based on ultrasonic (UT) sensor technology for non-destructive measurement applications to complex geometry micro casting components (nickel base alloy turbine blades). The system design consists of:
• displacement module for the realization of the relative motion between UT sensor and micro casting component (mechanical displacement device, interface boards, etc.)
• UT data acquisition module (sensors, UT instrumentation)
• driving control module and UT data acquisition and processing module (PC, interface boards, etc.)

Development of interfacing software codes between system modules (driving control module/displacement module; acquisition module/detection module) and UT signals digitisation and storage.

Development of software codes for thickness measurement of the turbine blade internal structure by UT methods. The software consists of:
• software module for displacement control
• software module for UT signal acquisition
• software module for time-of-flight (thickness) measurement, data verification and storage

Development of software codes for the detection and control of the turbine blade external geometry by UT methods. The software consists of:
• software module for displacement control
• software module for turbine blade profile acquisition
• software module for reconstruction, control and storage of turbine blade profile

Integration of the two previous software codes for the measurement of internal and external geometry of the turbine blade on the basis of only one UT scan. The integrated software consists of:
• integrated software module for displacement control
• integrated software module for UT data acquisition
• integrated software module for turbine blade profile reconstruction, thickness measurement, control and data storage

The University of Naples Federico II will continue to collaborate with the E.M.A. company on this application in order to ensure the scientific and technical support for the development of the industrial system of the UT sensor based metrology application to micro casting products quality assurance.