N102-141 TITLE: Non Destructive Material Case Depth Verification

TECHNOLOGY AREAS: Materials/Processes

ACQUISITION PROGRAM: PMA-299, H-60 Helicopter Program

OBJECTIVE: Accurately determine the case depth of hardened (carburized, nitrided, induction, etc.) aerospace materials by non-destructive means without the use of traditional destructive method of cross-sectioned specimens (hardness-traverse method).

DESCRIPTION: The Naval aviation community as owner and operator of aerospace systems continuously seeks improvement in the manufacturing arena. The Navy occasionally faces issues with inadequately case hardened aerospace components. One major issue is the determination of case-depth hardness of the materials. The industry standard method is to cross-section the specimen for a hardness-traverse measurement. This destructive inspection requires random sampling and can be quite expensive if there is a suspect population of non-conforming parts and a high demand for the suspect product. Developing a cost effective, accurate, hand held, innovative, non-destructive technology that would allow these case hardened parts to be inspected (measure case depth) without being destroyed, would increase the possibility of identifying non-conforming parts early in the production process. This would result in a decrease in cost to the government or OEMs by removing the need to inspect numerous suspect components by means of destroying potential conforming components. Develop innovative technology capable of measuring the case depth by non-destructive means of carburized aerospace gears (flank, face, pitch circle, fillet radius)l.

PHASE I: Design and demonstrate feasibility of a technology to measure case depth of hardened aerospace materials (carburized materials, gears).

PHASE II: Develop, demonstrate and validate the non-destructive case depth measuring technology for carburized materials. Refine the models for accuracy by accounting for geometry, material characteristics, ratio of case thickness to tooth thickness. Refine and conduct a prototype demonstration to characterize technology capability.

PHASE III: Conduct necessary qualification testing and finalize the non-destructive case depth measuring technology for transition to both military and commercial applications (gears, bearings, splines, shafts, etc).

PRIVATE SECTOR COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL/DUAL-USE APPLICATIONS: This technology would be applicable to aerospace and non-aerospace case hardening (carburize, nitride, induction, etc.) supply sources.

REFERENCES:
1. Chandler, H. (1999). Hardness Testing. Publisher: ASM International; 2 Sub edition

2. Cuffe, J., Sun, H., Plotnikov, Y., Nath, S., & Sheila-Vadde, A. (2008). Eddy Current Measurement of Case Hardened Depth of Steel Components, From 17th World Conference on Nondestructive Testing, Shangahai, China. Accessed online http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15948383/Eddy-Current-Measurement-of-Case-Hardened-Depth-of-Steel

KEYWORDS: non-destructive inspection; hand held; case hardened; steel; aerospace components; carburized materials

** TOPIC AUTHOR (TPOC) **

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