A SEMINAR REPORT

ON

LASER TESTING

INDEX
Page

Abstract Introduction Commonly used optical techniques Electronic speckle pattern interferometry Holographic interferometry Optical interfeometry Profilometry Shearography

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Advantages Disadvantages Application Conclusion Bibliography

ABSTRACT
The term laser testing may cause confusion because several other NDT methods make use of lasers in their inspection process. Lasers consist of coherent electromagnetic radiation at various wavelengths. When the wavelength is in the infrared part, its considered to have thermal properties. Lasers are used to produce and discover acoustic waves in several complex method ultrasonic testing. Ultrasonic laser techniques have been topic of discussion for many years but are not widely accepted.

Lasers generally funtion in the visible part of the spectrum, and the finest group of laser techniques(shearography,profilometry,and holography)are used for surface testing. The term laser NDT is usually means shearographic and profilometric methods. Shearography is used commonly for the detection of dents in airplanes and profilometry is used for detection of deposits in heat exchanger piping.

Introduction

In the field of Production and servicing, quality control is of primary importance,and the application of non destructive methods is of great significance .Though there are many sophisticated methods of non destructive testing like eddy currents,X-ray and ultrasound testing ,these are time consuming and can only be useful to a small area.so the necessity for more improved method came to being and laser was the feasible solution. Optical methods do not come in contact with the subject.Due to the low penetration depth of the radiation,these are typically indirect methods,that means that unlike other techniques ,light based wont detect defects directly instead they detect the defect induced temperature or the deformation during loading. In light based methods,there is no physical contact between the optical source and the test subject.This point helps using this method while the test object is in production line itself.,when the material is in intermediate or molten state. This method is a point technique,ie. where ever the device is pointed ,the area is scanned.if the whole area is to be scanned ,multiple probes in parallel should be used. One of the most important area ofapplication of laser testing is aerospace industry where very light and complex part are present.

Commonly used optical techniques

Electronic speckle pattern interferometry Holographic interferometry Optical interferometer Profilometer Shearography

Electronic speckle pattern interferometry

Electronic speckle pattern interferometry is sometimes called as TV holography. It is a method which uses laser along with video detection, recording and processing for imaging the stationary and active displacements of components relative to an optically rough surface. The imaging produced is in the form of fringes in which individual fringe shows the displacement of half the wavelength of light used.

ESPI can be effectively used for the measurement of stress ,strain and NDT testing. ESPI looks comparable to holographic interferometry in many aspects but its entirely different.
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ESPI WORKING

In order to conduct ESPI the test object should have an optically rough surface; the intension of using rough surface is that when the rough surface is illuminated by a laser beam, the image formed will be of subjective speckle pattern type. The laser light reaching a point in the speckled image is scattered from a limited area of the test object. The phase, amplitude and intensity of the light depend on the microstructure of material at that area.

Another light called the second light field or the reference beam is produced from the same laser beam and is superimposed on the image produced by the video camera. The two light fields produced interfere with each other and produce a light field which has got a random phase, amplitude and intensity, and there is a speckle pattern. When some type of deformation occurs to the body, there will be change in distance between the object and the image, therefore the speckle pattern also alters. The relative phase between the object beam and reference changes, hence the intensity of combined field also gets changed. In cases where the phase of change is 2*3.14 or its multiples, the relative change between the two fields remains unchanged. The overall intensity of the image also remains unchanged.

To visualise this change the reference and image beam is combined by a video camera and the images are recorded. Then the object is deformed from its initial position .the new image produced is subtracted point by point from the initial image. The resultant image produced is speckle pattern along with fringes indicating contours of 2*n*3.14.
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Holographic Interferometry
Holographic interferometry is a method in which the dynamic and the static displacements of the objects with an optically rough surface is measured to optical interferometric precision. These measurements can be used for the measurement of stress, strain and vibration and can be well applied in non-destructive testing. It can be used for detecting optical path variations in the case of transparent materials, this property helps in visualizing and analyzing the fluid flow. This can also be used for producing the form of the surface.

Holography helps to record and replay the light field scattered from the objects .when the recorded field is superimposed on the live field scattered from the test objects the two fields will be identical but if some deformation is given to the object the fields wont be identical and this relative phase change can be used to measure the interference .This method of measuring the interference is called live interferometry. Another method of holography is the fringe holography in this fringe is obtained by building two recordings of the scattered light by using a single recording medium. The produced light fields can then produce fringes which can be used to understand the displacements of the surface.

The fringe model depends on the changes in the surface position and air compaction. Many methods of analysing such patterns automatically have been developed in the recent years.

Optical interferometry
In optical interferometry the two or more light sources from an optical instrument is combined in order to cause interference between them. Early interferometers used white light and monochromatic light sources in order to produce interference.These interferences had wide applications especially in the calibration of slip gauges and measuring gas flow. Very small distances and thicknesses can be measured, including extremely small surface irregularities in optical devices such as mirrors. The development of laser has helped in developing new methods of measurements in engineering and other fields.

There are many configurations for the optical interferometry but the commonly used interferometer is the fizeau type which is commonly used in optical shops to measure the quality of optical and spherical surfaces.

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Profilometer
Profilometer is device that is used for calculating a surfaces profile,i.e surface roughness. Profilometer is used to measure the vertical depth of the material along a specified horizontal length. The use of this method includes measuring depth, surface roughness and deposited film thickness. The obtained results can be easily displayed on a printable graphical interface.

Unlike surface profilometers or stylus profilometers optical profilometers are non contact instruments and provides sufficient information about the material surface texture. An optical profilometer can be effectively used to measure wear analysis, fingerprint, material analysis and surface finish. Optical profiliometer can be effectively be applied on paper, plastics, paint, metals etc. Another important merit of using optical profilometer is the scan speed. Scan speed are not restricted in the case of optical profiliometer, other merits include less surface wear and less maintenance.

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Common classification of profilometer is

Contact profiliometer

Non contact profiliometer

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Shearography

Shearography is an optical measuring technique which uses coherent light for the interferometric inspection of optical and technical surfaces. The test object to be tested is illuminated by the use of laser and the object is imaged on a CCD camera (TV shearography) by the use of an optical shearing element. The shearing elements provide coherent superposition of 2 different laterally displace images of the test object on the image sample. The lateral displacement is produced on the plane is called the shear of the images, the superposition of the two images is termed as shearogram and its the interferogram of the of the object wave and sheared object wave which is the reference wave.

Two images are taken for the test object under different loading conditions the purpose of loading is that the loading should induce some deformation into the test object or should alter the deformation state on the surface of the material. The common loadings provided are mechanical, thermal or acoustical. The load can be applied to the object in the dynamic or static way.

The absolute difference between the two shearograms produced during different laoding conditions on the test object produce an interference fringe pattern which is related to the change in the deformation pattern. The image thus produced is then termed as D-image. Unlike holographic interferometry the fringes produced in the shearography shows the slope of the deformation. The defects inside the body may interfere the deformation produced on the surface of the material and thus cause disturbances in the loading fringes this permits the detection and classification of defects based on the shearographic images produced.

Shearography is a non contact, non destructive testing method and have wide application in the manufacturing industry especially in the case of composites and
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bonded structures. Shearography is an optical strain method because the strain produced during the loading process is used to know the defects in the materials. Another merit of laser shearography is that this method does not require any surface preparation.

Thermography can be applied only to a small area , holography is highly sensitive to surrounding disturbances. These demerits could be overcome by the usage of shearography .some of the other main advantages Non contact method Non-destructive method Less sensitive to external noise.

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Advantages
Effective Less time consuming Can be used along with production process High speed scan High resolution image

Less Cost Disadvantages

Skilled labour Complex parts Sensitive to external noise

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Application Space application Automobile fields Used in wind power Used in aerospace industry

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Conclusion
Laser testing in NDT is gaining acceptance worldwide. Though it will take some time for laser testing to get accepted as conventional methods such as Ultrasonic, X ray and eddy current inspections. It is much faster process and can scan a large area in a small time period. The method is serving its primary purpose of NDT, detecting structural properties, defect detection. They use more tactile techniques. Shearography has advantages such as excellent lateral resoultion and good penetration depth. Shearography testing is gaining huge importance in the field of aviation, with components of lightweight or component structures. A better defect visibility can be achieved by using better image processing and examination methods.

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Bibliography
Wikipedia-NDT methods NDT-lasers.com Industrial-lasers.com Intopsys.com

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