Nondestructive Detection and Assessment of Damage in Aging Aircraft Using a Novel Stress-Strain Microprobe® System

This paper demonstrates ABI® on aging aircraft structural components, establishing the aerospace application case for the technology. Presented at the SPIE conference on Nondestructive Evaluation of Aging Aircraft, Airports, and Aerospace Hardware — an FAA/DOD-funded forum — the work lent significant credibility to ABI® as a cross-industry structural assessment tool.

The aging aircraft problem in the 1990s was a major safety and economic concern following several high-profile incidents attributed to fatigue and corrosion damage in aging airframes. The FAA and DOD invested heavily in NDE research to develop techniques capable of detecting and quantifying damage before it reached critical levels.

Haggag's paper demonstrates that ABI® can detect the mechanical property changes associated with fatigue damage accumulation, corrosion-induced material loss, and heat damage in aircraft aluminum alloys and steel components. The ability to quantify degradation — not just detect its presence — distinguishes ABI® from conventional NDE methods that can find defects but cannot measure the remaining material properties.

This paper opened the aerospace sector as an application area for ABI®, complementing the existing nuclear and emerging pipeline applications.