TSU scientists investigate microdamage in aircraft glass


TSU radiophysicists proposed to study aviation glass using the holographic method of particle registration. It detects and fixes microdamage without removing the glass from the aircraft cabin, defining where microdamage is located and assessing its impact on flight safety.

Glazing is one of the key structural elements of an aircraft. Flight safety depends on the quality of its manufacture and technical condition at the time of operation. One of the most common materials in the production of glazing for modern civil and military aircraft is fluoroorganic aviation glass, and the main reason for the decrease in its strength is the appearance of very small microcracks from ultraviolet radiation, mechanical stress, and exposure to aggressive substances, for example, anti-icing fluids.

The strength of aircraft glass becomes unacceptably low for safe operation when the size of destructive defects reaches 100 microns. To control the glazing of aircraft in practice, methods of visual inspection with magnifying loupes and prisms are used, but it is impossible to determine the depth of a surface crack with an accuracy of 100 microns. Recently, research has been conducted on the use of the speckle-structure method of optical laser radiation for nondestructive testing, but the disadvantage of this method is the impossibility of determining the depth of a specific surface crack and the need to remove the glass from the structure itself.

Read more: http://en.tsu.ru/news/tsu-scientists-investigate-microdamage-in-aircraft-glass/