The Evaluation of Ultrasonic FMC/TFM on Real Fatigue Cracks

Using ultrasonic arrays to detect and evaluate Surface Breaking Cracks (SBCs) is important in the Non-destructive Evaluation (NDE) field. It can provide early stage detection of failure and useful information for component integrity evaluation. The Full Matrix Capture (FMC) can achieve the maxim data from an ultrasonic array and the Total Focusing Method (TFM) is used for imaging. As a powerful method for crack characterisation, machined slots are usually used to examine and assess FMC/TFM methodology. In this paper, real SBCs are fabricated in 3-point bending specimens following ASTM standard E1820 and used to examine the performance of this ultrasonic imaging method. This approach is shown to work well in imaging and sizing of real fatigue cracks.