Application of a Self-Calibrating Ultrasonic Technique to the Detection of Fatigue cracks by the Use of Lamb Waves

The reliability of fatigue-crack detection plays an important role in the safety of aircraft structures. Improvements in this reliability can be achieved by making the inspection technique independent of the coupling of the sensor to the specimen. A self-calibrating technique previously developed by the authors [1] makes it possible to detect and quantitatively characterize defects in aircraft structures with greater reliability