The aim of this project was to develop innovative Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques to on-line monitor CFRP damages during structural tests execution. The demonstrator included one or more NDT techniques. NDT instrumentation was performed automatically and without human intervention data acquisition and analysis and transferred results through web to the structural test control system in real-time.

Up to now, ultrasonic conventional manual inspection was carried out. For safety reasons, facilities were stopped before. One of the first steps of the project consisted for demonstrating the feasibility of novel NDT techniques. Among others, non-contact advanced ultrasonic inspection was proposed (laser ultrasonics, air-coupled UT) as well as other imaging techniques, such as infrared thermography and laser shearography. All these approaches were postulated with the aim of:

• avoiding human intervention;
• reducing inspection time;
• improving inspection quality by providing NDT data positioning and recording;
• simplifying system automation; and
• providing processed data by means of image processing and data fusion, extracting automatically relevant information to support structural test follow up and associated decision making procedures.

A NDT demonstrator was validated at subcomponent level and in a more realistic scenario (f.i.on large test parts with curved laminates and complex geometries).