Non-destructive evaluation, inspection and testing of primary aeronautical composite structures using grating- based phase contrast x-ray imaging

The EU-project EVITA aims at bringing Grating-based Phase Contrast Xray imaging technology to non-destructive evaluation and inspection of pr imary aeronautical composite structures. A demonstrator has been developed to meet the requirements of the aeronautic industry for the inspection of thin and thick carbon fibre reinforced polymer components. The technical specifications of the demonstrator and first results on the comparison of the new metho dology with stateof-the-art techniques are presented. The introduction of this innovative methodology is expected to provide the aeronautical industry with a reliable and detailed insight of the integrity of thi n and thick composite structures as well as of complex geometry ones, such as integrated closed boxes and sandwiches. In particular, the detectability of defects such as r esin rich areas and outof-plane wrinkles are demonstrated in this paper. By increasing the level of detectability of defects in composite structur es, as well as by detecting defects invisible to standard industrial non-destructive testing methodologies, we envision that the novel method will allow to increase the no ndestructive inspection process reliability.