Corrosion affects all material types across aircraft fleets with severity depending on the mission, environment and conditions of use in the U. S. Air Force. The estimated direct cost of corrosion to the Air Force Aviation and Missiles is $5.5B annually. The real impact of corrosion is that it causes around an 18% reduction in aircraft mission capability rates / aircraft availability. This decrease in mission capability rate / aircraft availability amounts to a reduction of 2.9M flight hours annually across the U.S. Air Force fleets. In the proposed STTR program, Treble One and EWI will adapt its commercially available non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and testing techniques to detect and assess different severities of corrosion attacking aluminum that is widely used in USAF aircraft manufacturing. Treble One and EWIs approach will combine commercially available technologies into a field deployable suite of NDE tools capable of providing high fidelity assessment of concealed forms of corrosion. The field deployable NDE suite will augment the ability of corrosion service teams at corrosion repair facilities and depots to target critical, high consequence areas of incoming assets.
