Description
Instructor(s)/Supervisor(s)/Coordinator(s): Fan SHIThrough non-destructive evaluation (NDE), engineers can detect and characterise defects, cracks, or any possible internal damages inside engineering components (e.g. turbine blades of aircraft engine, aircraft body made of composite laminates and petrochemical pipelines). High profile incidents such as the A380 engine explosion in Singapore in 2010, and Deepwater Horizon accident were caused by undetected cracks in either turbine blades or pressure vessels. The importance of NDE is clear as it can avoid these risks by finding a crack in time, and also reduce unnecessary maintenance cost. This course will introduce the basic ingredients of NDE techniques. Different NDE approaches, including visual, penetrant, eddy current, x-ray and ultrasound will be covered. The course will focus on ultrasonic NDE because it is the most widely used, and it is very popular in the aviation industry (e.g. HASEL, HAECO in HK and Rolls Royce in UK). It will start from very basic acoustic/ultrasonic knowledge to practical inspection methods and more advanced techniques. The lectures will be associated with real industrial application examples from instructor's consulting experiences in the aerospace and nuclear industry.