<title>Role of data fusion in NDE for aging aircraft</title>

Abstract

As structural integrity models for aging aircraft begin to include the effects of corrosion and corrosion-fatigue, nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques will be called upon to provide metrics of corrosion for input to these models. It is unlikely that any one NDE technique can provide all the required metrics to characterize the condition of complex airframe structures. This paper discusses how data fusion can be used to integrate the results of multiple NDE techniques into a form suitable for input to structural models. Examples of the inspection of service-retired lap joints with NDE techniques including pulsed eddy current, conventional eddy current, Edge of Light, and D Sight are given. Significant metrics for structural models of the joint are discussed, and the performance of the individual NDE techniques on the metrics of corrosion and fatigue is evaluated. The results are used to generate a set of requirements for data fusion system to successfully transform the NDE data to a form a suitable for input to the structural models.