Carbon Fibre NDT
Possel,
I'm with you all the way on this one, and would be interested to know what sort of 'strain guages' might detect the sort of sharp impact composites particularly dislike ( and hide ).
Like you, I was involved in the development of the GR5, and even a hint of a strike was enough to cause grounding & ultrasonic testing.
A particular worry was link strikes on the horizontal stabiliser; so we painted the aft fuselage ( yes, the metal bit ) white on ZD319 to show any near misses.
We also had 14 heated cine cameras from various pods,
including wide angle looking forward from the airbrake etc running at 200 frames per second.
This problem soon solved itself, as the 25mm Aden guns proved hopeless so were deleted !
As an Instrumentation/ technical photographer, I also had to go to Wittering one day after a GR5 was in a serious lightning strike - ultra
sound people were all over it scratching their heads...
A recent tv programme was not at all reassuring about carbon fibre & lightning either - a fine material for a fighter requiring top performance, with 'only' 1-2 lives at risk, both with 0-0 seats, but not a great move when transporting hundreds of people whose only protection is the in-flight magazine.
I also helped with a few photo's for an ex- Flight Test chum for his thesis on carbon fibre repair schemes.
I won't say where he works now, but it's a job most of us could only dream of.
I think the dye marker idea sounds quite a good one - and the 'no blame - or very little - regime' if one owns up to a cock-up is common sense.
Otherwise, one is faced with things like the old, supposedly true story about a night security guard in ' a Middle Eastern air force ' who practised fitness pull-ups on a fighter pitot probe - on finding he'd bent it, the solution was simple - he went and bent the probes on the other flight line aircraft so they all looked the same !
Last edited by Double Zero; 30th Dec 2008 at 14:41.