The University of Southampton is helping to develop new imaging technology to be used in the design, manufacture and maintenance for current and future generations of carbon composite aircraft. Led by QinetiQ, the UK consortium of the University of Southampton and University College London (UCL) and four companies in ProjectCAN brings together world leaders from academia, the aerospace industry and X-ray inspection equipment manufacture.
As part of the government’s Aerospace Technology Institute, Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, has provided the team with significant funding to develop two new non-destructive testing processes for the detection of flaws in composite aerospace components. The University of Southampton’s µ-VIS Centre for Computed Tomography is host to one part of this three-year project. Together with Nikon Metrology UK Ltd, it aims to develop and test methods for scanning and visualising the insides of large, flat components using X-rays. The partners will develop both the system for acquiring scan data and software to reconstruct it into a 3-D volume image, allowing manipulation and visualisation using standard software.
