Ageing electrical wiring inspection is one of the concern in aerospace sector. Aircraft wires operate under constant change of operational conditions i.e. aircraft wires might operate under a cold, hot or humid environment with variations in the atmospheric pressure. Operating in such conditions might create chafes, cracks, cuts, delamination or embrittlement in the insulation of the aircraft wires. The extreme conditions under which aircraft wires operate may cause failure if it becomes brittle or cracked. In these scenerios aircraft wiring can be potential fire hazard. There have been 400 reported incidents due to aircraft wiring failures. Therefore, there is a need for an inspection technique to improve the reliability of the aircraft wiring. NDT technology can be used to inspect aircraft wires and is regarded as the promising technology for aerospace industry to reduce its maintenance costs by 70% and can increase the system lifetime operation of aerospace systems. Consequently,reducing the need for new products, which will ultimately save cost for aviation industry. UltraHandMan project will develop a novel portable wiring inspection system based on extended long range ultrasonic testing techniques ,advanced signal processing software, innovative sensor array in combination with energised handheld pulser/receiver. Flaws in the wiring will reflect ultrasound back to the sensor assembly and will be detected by the pulser/receiver.Insulation damage will be recognised by advanced signal processing and pattern recognition techniques.

HiTClean addresses a number of related safety critical, security of energy supply, production economic and maintenance challenges in the life cycle of Oil&Gas offshore production installations (e.g. platforms and FPSOs) subsea assets including pipelines and production pressure components. The project will develop novel guided wave ultrasonic technology for subsea pipelines to be deployed by diver or a Remote Operating Vehicle (ROV): (A) Condition Monitoring (CM) for the early detection of in-service defects, e.g. corrosion - using Long Range Guided Wave Ultrasonic (LR-GWU) Pulse Echo (PE) technology, Teletest Focus electronic instrument, encircling ultrasonic sensors and signal processing for the on-line (in-production) innovative inspection of subsea pipes carrying hydrocarbons, (B) Innovative High Power - Continuous Wave (CW) LR-GWU electronic instrument and transmitters to dislodge and remove accumulated debris fouling in subsea & topside pipelines at temperatures of up to 400°C, (C) for pipe regions susceptible to fouling - innovative Moderate Power CW LR-GWU electronic instrumentation and transmitters for fouling prevention in subsea pipelines at temperatures of up to 400°C.

Future generation aircraft will consist mostly of carbon composite materials. The modes of failure in composite intensive aircraft are not fully known as they are still near the beginning of their design life, although it is clear that they are susceptible to internal impact damage, not visible at the surface. Yet current NDI of composites in production and service is still largely manual with low area coverage and NDI images are difficult to interpret for any technique because of macroscopic structural anisotropy. To address these problems the project proposes two key NDI innovations: (1) Up to 100% volume NDI coverage using gantry deployed, CAD controlled robotics so that inspection records at any point can be accurately compared at successive maintenance downtime intervals to allow health diagnostics and progostics. (2) A step increase in current detection probability for composite defects implemented through an inference engine performing similarity analysis on spatial and temporal changes in images with coherent noise removal performed by Bayesian separation. The innovations, validated using ultrasonic NDI, are applicable to any type of NDI sensor.

We aim to provide mine operators with a rapid method of detecting and removing calcium and similar deposits from in service check valves without stopping production, thus extending the life of expensive components, reducing the cost of maintenance by 50%pa and downtime by 5%pa. In the case of cyanidation, exposure of maintenance operatives to cyanide will be reduced to zero for certain tasks, presenting obvious health benefits. The system will reduce the risk of contamination from back-flow, and could be applied to other industries where check valves (or similar) are used, eg petrochem, nuclear or hydropower generation. A novel ultrasonic cleaning method will be developed: the components themselves act as a cleaning bath so are not removed from service. A device consisting of a wave generator, amplifiers and high power ultrasonic transducers will be clamped to accessible surfaces of the valve to remove well adhered debris effectively without chemicals.