Nondestructive Evaluation of Thick Outer Mold Line Paints and Coatings

ABSTRACT: To address the Air Forces need for a nondestructive evaluation tool for aircraft outer mold line (OML) urethane and epoxy integrity assessment to address and identify premature failures, ChromoLogic (CL) proposed and demonstrated during Phase I a Coating Integrity Monitoring by Spectroscopic Analysis (CIMOSA) system based on nondestructive optical measurements of coating materials chemical composition. CL demonstrated that a cost-effective nondestructive non-invasive coating evaluation tool in real-time is highly feasible. Tests with the CIMOSA prototypes showed that USAF paint samples with different levels of degradation can be discriminated between when compared to the normal sample. Phase I results, clearly identified a validation pathway and the strong commercial interest in the CIMOSA system offers us the confidence that continued Phase II technology improvements in all the CIMOSA subsystems will lead to a non-destructive and non-invasive aircraft paint coating integrity monitoring system and will meet the Air Forces requirements for an intuitive to use, portable device that requires no sample collection or use of any chemical assays. The entire system will be validated by bench-top aircraft paint samples of numerous paint layers with various autoclaved time ranges followed by aircraft measurements in a hanger at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. BENEFIT: Develop a non-invasive and non-destructive way of measuring aircraft coating integrity levels of operational aircraft. It will be usable by a non-expert and can be used in aircraft maintenance facilities for the USAF and aircraft manufacturers.