Donecle and Roboplanet look into non-destructive testing for military aircraft
Helen Chachaty
 le 28/11/2019 , Maintenance aéronautique
France's Defence Innovation Agency has awarded research and development contracts to Donecle and Roboplanet, as part of tender process for non-destructive testing. Launched in June in partnership with the French air force and the DMAé, it seeks to "improve non-destructive aircraft testing". The 400 000 Euro budget is intended to support the two projects for twelve months and produce a demonstrator at the end of 2020, to be tested on an aircraft "or a representative part".
In partnership with Dassault Aviation and 8Tree, Donecle is presenting a 3D inspection solution assisted by a "100% automated" drone for aircraft coatings. "It would enable the measurement of surface faults - on metal and composite surfaces - and allow us to track their position on the aircraft's digital model". The Toulouse-based company which was created four years again has made automated aircraft inspection by drone its speciality and has already begun to win over the civilian market, as shown by recent contracts signed with Austrian and AAR.
For its part, Roboplanet is proposing a "semi-autonomous robot with ultrasound sensors" for "automatic fault detection" at the core of a composite part and to generate inspection reports. The company which is based in Nantes also specialises in non-destructive testing solutions and includes the French navy among its customers, to which it has proposed a multi-element corrosion scanner "dedicated to ultrasound thickness measurement" on metal surfaces.
The objective of the call for projects is to produce innovative solutions to develop non-destructive testing techniques, in particular through their automation (partial or total), in order to reduce both lead times and also the number of personnel. These are operations which are related to airframe ageing or the search for cracks, whether in France or abroad.
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