The Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Engineering group develops, enhances and tests advanced nondestructive methods for characterizing aerospace material properties and component integrity.  Sponsored by and located in the Air Force Research Laboratories’ Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, this group has access to both world-class research facilities and some of the best and brightest scientists and engineers from around the world. 

Although located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and primarily serving Air Force needs, UDRI personnel can use these facilities to characterize material properties and integrity for industrial customers through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA).

Among other techniques, the NDE group has designed, fabricated, and tested a three-element acoustic microscope transducer for nondestructively measuring material stress as a function of depth at the surface of materials.

Members of the NDE Engineering Group have the following expertise:

• X-ray diffraction measurements of localized surface residual stress and stress versus depth measurements on as-machined, shot-peened, laser-shock-peened, fretting-fatigued and quenched surfaces  -- Shamachary Sathish, Richard Martin
• Material properties measurements using atomic force microscopy, ultrasonic force microscopy, and acoustic microscopy techniques -- Shamachary Sathish
• Damage precursor detection and monitoring by nonlinear acoustic techniques -- Shamachary Sathish, Jeong-Kwan Na
• Hidden-corrosion detection and material loss measurements using ultrasonic and eddy-current methods -- Richard Martin, Ray Ko, Brian Frock
• NDE of thermal barrier systems -- Samuel Kuhr
• Measurement and imaging of material density and porosity by x-ray computed tomography techniques -- see: NDE Engineering Facilities 
• Development and implementation of computer-controlled, high-speed data-acquisition systems -- Richard Martin, Jeffrey Fox, Robert Olding
• Use of ultrasonic and eddy-current techniques for nondestructive detection of cracks and anomalies in materials and components --  Richard Martin, Brian Frock, Ray Ko, Wally Hoppe
• NDE for integrated vehicle health monitoring -- Jeong-Kwan Na 
• Implementation and application of digital signal-processing techniques for improving signal-to-noise ratios and signal resolution -- Brian Frock, Richard Martin
• Implementation and application of image-processing and image-enhancement techniques for improving resolution and anomaly identification -- Brian Frock
• Program and project management -- Brian Frock

The NDE Engineering group also operates and conducts research in the Center for Materials Diagnostics (CMD).  Equipment in that facility includes:

• A scanning microprobe system capable of acquiring atomic force, ultrasonic force and magnetic force data from materials in the nanometer range
• An ultra-high precision scanning white light interference microscope (WLIM) for digitizing, storing and analyzing surface profile data
• An SEM with EDAX and OIM capabilities
• Optical equipment such as a near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) (for visible and IR wavelengths), a nano-Raman imaging system, a micro-ellipsometer, and laser-optic systems and optical microscopes.  Dr. Qiwen Zhan, an Assistant Professor in UD’s Graduate Electro-Optics Department conducts the research and development studies in the optics area.
• A laser vibrometer