Application of Air-Coupled Ultrasonic Techniques Using Carbon/Carbon Composites

Abstract:

Carbon/carbon(C/C) composite materials have obvious advantages over conventional materials, which consist of carbon fibers embedded in a carbon matrix. It’s low density, high thermal conductivity and excellent mechanical properties at elevated temperatures make it an ideal material for aerospace applications especially aircraft brake disks. Because of permeation of coupling medium such as water, it is desirable to perform contact-less nondestructive evaluation to assess material properties and part homogeneity. In this work, a C/C composite material was characterized with non-contact and contact ultrasonic methods using automated acquisition scanner. . Due to the acoustic impedance mismatch found between most materials and air, a major limitation for air-coupled transducers, through-transmission mode was performed. Especially ultrasonic images and velocities for C/C composite disk brake were measured and found to be consistent to some degree with the non-contact and contact ultrasonic measurement methods. 400 kHz frequency through-transmission scans based on both amplitude and time-of-flight of the ultrasonic pulse were used for mapping out the inhomogeneity in material property. Non-contact measured results were compared with those obtained by the motorized system using contact drycoupling ultrasonics and through transmission method in immersion. Results using a proposed peak-delay measurement non-contact method corresponded well to the ultrasonic velocities of the contact pulse overlap method.