REVIEW OF NON DESTRUCTIVE TESTING TECHNIQUES FOR COMPOSITES MATERIALS AND NEW APPLICATIONS OF PIEZO-POLYMER INTERDIGITAL TRANSDUCERSSensors and Microsystems - Proceedings of the 10th Italian Conference

The paper reviews the techniques employed for non destructive testing (NDT) on Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) materials from the perspective of the sensors characteristics and compares the different methods, even the most recently developed by the authors, based on guided acoustic waves generated/detected with piezopolymer intergitated transducers (piezo-IDT). These devices transmit and receive ultrasonic guided waves traveling inside the material and are able to detect any accidental defect or damage occurred to the material itself. New application of piezopolymer IDT for NDT on different types of composites will be presented and the very good defect detection capability will be demonstrated by exciting a symmetric mode S0 at 350 kHz.