Solid Rocket Motor NDE Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Mobile single-sided NMR

“…Carbon-fiber reinforced material is hard to measure as it is conducting and shields rf, and the sensitivity of the NMR-MOUSE in the T 1q measurements needed for identification of thermal damage is too low [315,580]. On the other hand, the sensor can be used in the vicinity of steel, as some distortions of the magnetic measuring field can be tolerated [469,525,579].…”

“…The use of such sensors [42] had been published before in the context of inspecting solid rocket motor bond-lines nondestructively [469][470][471]. More recently, the mobile insideout NMR technology has been complemented by mobile outside-in magnets [88,434,435] which bear great promise for analysis of cylindrical objects such as geophysical drill cores [222,434,472,473], of food produce and other objects on conveyor belts passing through the magnet [150,155,474], and of capillaries bearing fluids for chemical analysis by nano-liter spectroscopy [441].…”

“…49a) [184,579], and to identify defects by probing at suspicious positions, such as in glass-fiber reinforced components (Fig. 49b) [481,482,566] and solid rocket motor bond-lines [469,525]. Also the quality of processing could be identified, for example, on intact spools of synthetic fibers [582].…”