Laser-Excited Ultrasound Detects, Localizes Composite Defects Without Contact

Xarion Laser Acoustics (Vienna, Austria) has developed laser excited acoustics (LEA), an ultrasonic inspection technology that combines laser-generated ultrasound with a patented optical microphone to inspect composite components fully automatically and without physical contact, couplant or immersion tanks.

As composites manufacturing scales toward higher production rates, inspection speed increasingly limits how quickly parts can move through a line. Conventional ultrasonic testing requires gel or water coupling, which adds handling steps, complicates automation and can create throughput bottlenecks when probe setups must change between part geometries. For moisture-sensitive components, water-based inspection is not an option at all. LEA removes these constraints: A single compact, fiber-coupled inspection head accommodates varying curvatures without probe changes, couplant supply or cleanup, allowing it to integrate into robotic systems and collaborative robot cells alike.

The technology’s air-coupled, single-sided pulse-echo approach not only detects delaminations, disbonds, cracks and porosity but also localizes defects by depth, providing information intended to support repair decisions in carbon fiber composites.

Application examples span a range of automation scales. Large robotic installations can inspect helicopter tailbooms and other curved aerospace structures in a single uninterrupted scan pass, while compact cobot cells bring the same capability to smaller, complex parts such as inlet ducts and engine cowls, with fast setup and no couplant handling. For satellite solar array substrates and other moisture-sensitive assemblies, LEA is positioned to enable full ultrasonic inspection where water-based methods are not permissible.

The sensor head is available in configurations from one to 16 channels, and the company positions the technology for use across aerospace, automotive and microelectronics applications, scaling from laboratory validation to fully automated production-line deployment.