Electromagnetic Non Destructive Evaluation of fibreglass/aluminium laminates using HTS SQUID magnetometers

The aerospace and aeronautical industries pay much attention to improve flight safety of the airlines. In aircraft design it is important to couple low structural weight with high damage tolerance. For this reason, a new class of advanced composite materials, named Fiber/Metal Laminates (FML), which combine the best features of organic matrix composites and metals, are used. In this work, a nondestructive evaluation of FML specimens based on an eddy-current technique that uses an HTS SQUID (Superconductive QUantum Interference Device) magnetometer is proposed. The aim is to demonstrate that this technique is capable of detecting the presence of damage hidden by plastic deformation after impact events.