Application of ultrasonic inspection to characterization of advanced SiC/SiC composites

Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of ceramic matrix composites is essential to develop reliable ceramics for industrial applications. In this work, C-scan image analysis has been used to nondestructively characterize surface cracks in SiC/SiC composite ceramics. The possibility of detecting surface cracks was evaluated experimentally using ultrasonic equipment of μ-SDS with a probe of 170 MHz. The defocus method could detect the shape of surface cracks. As a whole, when the defocus method for the probe was used, we conclude that there is a good possibility of detecting surface cracks.