Advanced ultrasonic NDT of aero engine components using standard transducers and optimized mirrors

The inspection of complex-shaped components can suffer from the fact that the area of interest can not be properly insonified due to restricted access. In such cases, mirrors can be applied to turn the ultrasonic beam onto the component's surface. In this paper, the optimization of such a mirror is illustrated for a specific application in aero engine inspection. Its shape has been designed to compensate the influence of the curved component surface on the ultrasonic beam field and to additionally achieve a focusing of the beam.