w x ME BACK TO BASICS

TAPtest
Tap Test: Evolution of an Old Technique
by David K. Hsu, Daniel J. Barnard and Dennis P. Roach

From Materials Evaluation, Vol. 67, No. 7, pp: 785-791. Copyright 2009 The American Society for Nondestructive Testing, Inc.

This special issue on NDT of adhesive bonds contains papers that discuss a number of issues and approaches for assessing bonded joints. Fundamental to our experience with bonds is the tap test that so many use in their daily lives. In this Back to Basics, the authors review for us the physics of how the tap test works, how technology can improve its capabilities for NDT and how it measures up against other techniques. Guest Technical Editor Richard H. Bossi
n the nondestructive testing of adhesively bonded structures such as honeycomb panels, the oldest technique still widely used is the simple tap test. The tap test is a local technique (as opposed to a global resonance technique like the ring test of railroad wheels), in which the surface contact stiffness is probed by tapping. Tapping a location without damage produces a crisp, solid sound, whereas tapping a damaged region produces a dull sound. The subtle variations in audible response from the structure are detected by the inspector and used to infer the presence of discontinuities. The hearing based and manually operated tap test, although inexpensive to conduct, is hampered by operator-dependent variability and by the presence of background noise in the work environment. Over the years, research on the mechanical response of tap testing has led to the evolution of the technique from an operator-dependent qualitative test to an instrumented

J U LY 2 0 0 9 M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N

785

ME BACK TO BASICS w x tap test

the physical response to a tap involves force data and sound data
technique with imaging capability (Figure 1). This article briefly describes the progress and the state of the art of tap testing for adhesively bonded composite structures. The physical response to a tap involves force data and sound data (Wu and Siegel, 2000). Although the acoustic spectrum has been used in some instrumented tap testing systems (Pfund, 1996), most of this instrumentation focuses on the force response (Adams et al., 1986; Georgeson et al., 1996; Mitsuhashi et al., 1991; Hsu et al., 2000).

porating an accelerometer or force sensor into the tapping mass. The contact time of a tap depends on the local contact stiffness of the surface and the mass of the tapper, but it is relatively insensitive to the velocity or the force of the tap. Figure 2 shows the force-time history of increasingly hard taps in a good region and in a damaged region on a composite honeycomb sandwich panel. The tapping mass is a 10 g (0.35 oz), 10 mV/g (283 mV/oz) accelerometer fitted with a hemispherical tip. The vertical axis of the figures is the voltage output (acceleration or force) and the width of the curves near the base is the contact time. The range of contact time obtained with a small mass, of the order of 14 g (0.5 oz), on composite honeycomb sandwiches with glass or carbon

The Basics of Tap Testing

The physical quantity most central to the tap testing of structures is the contact time or impact duration between the tapping mass and the part surface. The contact time at a location with internal damage is often much longer than that at an undamaged region. The contact time can be measured by incor-

Hearing based coin tap

Sensory judgment

(a)

Instrumented tap test

Electronic signal, contact time

Mechanized tapping unit

Solenoid or magnet driven

(b)

Tap test with imaging

Merging contact time and position

Figure 1. Evolution of the tap test technique.

Figure 2. Force-time history for increasingly great tapping force on a composite honeycomb panel: (a) in a good region; (b) in a damaged region. Accelerometer output displayed with horizontal axis of 100 s/div and vertical axis of 0.5 V/div.

786

M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N J U LY 2 0 0 9

facesheets of up to 7 or 8 plies, is several hundred microseconds. The sensitivity of the tap test on structures with thicker facesheets (greater than 9 plies) is too low to be useful even with instrumented units. The results in Figure 2 show that the contact time is approximately constant for different tapping forces in both good and damaged regions. This independence of the tapping force is analogous to the constant period of a swing when pushed with different force. It is also consistent with the prediction of Hertzian contact theory that the contact time between a ball and a flat object is inversely proportional to a small power (approximately 0.2) of the balls velocity and hence not very sensitive to the impact velocity. The contact time of a handheld tapping mass has proven to be surprisingly consistent among different operators despite the differences in tapping force, velocity, strike angle and grasping force. Laboratory tests of a small group showed approximate variations of less than 5%. A commonly cited model for the tap test is the simple spring model, where a tapper mass m is bounced off the surface represented by a spring constant k. In this model, the force-time curve is taken to be one half cycle of the mass-spring oscillation. The contact time is therefore = (m/k)1/2. For a given m, a good structure with a higher stiffness k will produce a shorter contact time and a higherpitched, crispy sound. Conversely, a damaged region with a lower stiffness will lead to a longer contact time and hence a lower-pitched, dull sound. On this basis, the local contact stiffness k can be deduced from the contact time measured by an instrumented tap testing device. The significance of this relationship is that a meaningful engineering quantity of the structure, the local stiffness, can be obtained from a tap test using any impactor of a known mass without the need for reference standards. The stiffness deduced from the tap test has been compared with the stiffness at the same location measured in static load tests. The measurements were made on a number of honeycomb sandwich panels with carbon fiber and glass fiber reinforced polymer facesheets of various thickness. The comparison of the stiffness deduced from tap testing and measured by static loading is shown in Figure 3. The good agreement shows that an instrumented tap test can produce a quantity indicative of the damage condition of the structure.

and used in the detection of discontinuities, damage and property degradation. Further processing of the data, using Fourier spectral analysis for example, has also been used. However, the most beneficial tap test instrumentation focuses on the electronic acquisition of the contact time. By incorporating an accelerometer into the tapping device, the contact time may be measured with a simple circuit without the need of acquiring a digitized force-time curve. For example, a counter may be started when the output voltage exceeds a certain threshold, and stopped when the voltage falls below the threshold. The value of the contact time can be used directly in the differentiation of damaged and undamaged regions based on the established contact time of a good region for the tapper mass used. Alternatively, the stiffness deduced from the contact time, a tapper mass independent quantity, may be used as the differentiating parameter. In the progress toward instrumented tap testing, there have been at least four systems developed over the last two decades. A mechanized tap test device, developed by Cawley and Adams (1985) and at one time commercialized, uses a force transducer in a solenoid-driven impactor. The system makes use of the Fourier transform of the force-time history for differentiating between good and bad regions of a structure. When combined with a motorized scanner, the device was shown to produce good tap

Stiffness k from Static Load Test (MN/m)

k static = 1.03, ktap - 0.13 R 2 = 0.92

0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Instrumented Tap Test

The force data and the sound data of the tap test may be acquired with electronic circuits so as to eliminate the dependence on the operators sensory response. Certain features of the digital data may be extracted

Stiffness k from Tap Test (MN/m)

Figure 3. A comparison of the surface stiffness deduced from tap testing and measured in a static load test.

J U LY 2 0 0 9 M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N

787

ME BACK TO BASICS w x tap test

(a)

test images of honeycomb sandwich structures. A handheld, battery-driven tap tester (hereinafter referred to as Instrumented Tapper I), developed by Mitsuhashi et al. (1991) employs a solenoid-driven hammer that contains an accelerometer for measuring the time during which the hammer is in contact with the surface. An attachment to Instrumented Tapper I displays the numerical value of the contact time in microseconds. A handoperated digital hammer (referred to here as Instrumented Tapper II) was developed by Georgeson et al. (1996; 2004) and became commercially available. Instrumented Tapper II also displays the value of the contact time, but the impactor is a hand-wielded plastic hammer containing an acceleration sensor. The contact time at a region of unknown condition is referenced to that of a known good region. Finally, a computer-aided tap tester developed by Hsu et al. (2001) uses a piezoelectric accelerometer fitted with a hemispherical tip as a handheld impactor and also in a semi-automated magnetic tapper. The instrument uses the contact time data and converts it into the local stiffness based on the mass of the impactor. Figure 4 shows three of the four systems described above.

Mechanized Tap Test

Since the tap test is a local testing technique, full coverage of the testing area requires tapping in a grid pattern with a pixel size appropriate for the discontinuity size of interest. Aircraft maintenance manuals often call for this mode of testing. However, a raster scan using a handheld impactor can be tedious and impractical for larger areas; a mechanized tapper is therefore desirable. Two of the systems described above (the mechanized tapper developed by Cawley and Adams [1985] and Instrumented Tapper I), use solenoid-driven impactors. The system developed by Hsu et al. (2001) uses a magnet-operated cart that impacts the surface with the accelerometer at a preset pitch as the cart is pushed over the surface. These mechanized tappers have substantially alleviated the operator fatigue problem often associated with the tap test. A mechanized device not only ensures uniformity of the tapping force and angle of strike, but is indispensible in a system that generates tap test images.

(b)

Tap Test Imaging

(c)

Figure 4. Instrumented tap test devices developed by: (a) Mitsuhashi et al.; (b) Georgeson et al.; (c) Hsu et al.

With an instrumented tap device, the task of generating a tap test scan image involves merging two streams of data: the tap test data (that is, contact time) and the probe position data. The instrument developed by Cawley and Adams (1985) employs a

788

M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N J U LY 2 0 0 9

motorized scanner for generating the tap test scan image. The system developed by Hsu et al. (2001) uses a thin plastic overlay with a printed grid in an assumed encoding scheme. To generate a scan image, the surface is tapped through the overlay grid, either manually or with the magnetic cart, in a predetermined raster fashion. The number of pixels in the height and width directions of the scan are entered into the data acquisition and plotting software before the scan. Figure 5 shows a tap test image of a carbonfiber reinforced polymer honeycomb sandwich panel containing six engineered discontinuities that simulate disbonds. The figure is an image of the local stiffness k converted from the measured contact time using the impactor mass. Figure 5 shows that the background stiffness of the panel is approximately 1.4 MN/m (95 900 lbf/ft); at the two worst discontinuities, the stiffness has decreased to about 0.5 MN/m (34 261 lbf/ft). The main advantage of an image display of the tap test results is that the visual and analytical power of the operator is immediately put to use. The size, shape and severity of the discontinuities can be easily assessed. In addition, the distinction between discontinuities and normal substructures is much easier to make using an image that displays both the discontinuities and the normal substructures such as ply overlaps, core splices and repair patches. An example of intensive application of tap test imaging in the field is shown in Figure 6. The image shows the inner and outer surfaces of a composite rudder that was recovered from an aircraft accident that involved both the vertical stabilizer and rudder components. Parts of the rudder were broken apart, so the tap test scans, made with the semiautomatic magnetic cart of the system developed by Hsu et al. (2001) over intact regions, were assembled afterwards. The assembled image in Figure 6 represented more than 60 scans of 600 by 900 mm (2 by 3 ft) each and covered a total scanned area of approximately 37 m2 (400 ft2). The overall image revealed considerable information about the damage distribution and fracture orientation on the rudder.

Figure 5. Tap test image of surface contact stiffness of a 460 460 mm (18 18 in.) composite honeycomb sandwich containing engineered discontinuities.

Tap Test Performance

The majority of composite honeycomb structural testing is performed visually and supplemented by tap test techniques. The FAA Airworthiness Assurance Center at Sandia National Labs completed a probability of detection (POD) experiment to assess the performance of both conventional and advanced NDT techniques (Roach and Rackow,

Figure 6. Tap test image of a composite rudder recovered from an aircraft accident, showing damage to: (a) the left side outer and inner skins; (b) the main spar; (c) the right side outer and inner skins.

J U LY 2 0 0 9 M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N

789

ME BACK TO BASICS w x tap test

The tap test will eventually evolve into automated systems capable of imaging and quantitative analysis.
2003). A series of composite honeycomb specimens with statistically relevant discontinuity profiles were tested using both manual tap test equipment and new testing techniques that have recently been introduced to automate and improve composite NDT. Industrywide performance curves were produced to establish: G how well current testing techniques are able to reliably find discontinuities in composite honeycomb structures G the degree of improvements possible through the integration of more advanced NDT techniques and procedures. To acquire the discontinuity detection data, the panels were shipped to airlines, third-party maintenance depots, aircraft manufacturers and NDT developer labs around the world. In all, more than 70 inspectors of different ages and experience levels performed the blind tests to produce statistically valid POD curves that are representative of the industry as a whole. The NDT techniques that were evaluated ranged from manually applied tap testing to automated, sensor based forms of tap testing (Hsu et al., 2001; Mitsuhaski et al., 1991) to C-scan technology for improved discontinuity identification. Figure 7 shows a series of POD plots that compare the discontinuity detection performance for various manually deployed and automated tap test devices when testing a honeycomb structure with 6-ply fiberglass skin. Also plotted are the results from handheld low-frequency bond testing and mechanical impedance analysis (MIA) testing. Improvements attainable through the application of advanced NDT techniques to those same results are shown in Figure 8. In this set of POD curves, results from the system developed by Hsu et al. (2001) are compared with resonance and MIA scan techniques, laminography, thermography and ultrasonic array testing.

Figure 7. Cumulative POD curve comparisons of conventional NDT devices on a honeycomb panel with 6-ply fiberglass facesheet.

Conclusion
The tap test testing technique has evolved from a hearing based manual test into instrumented systems in which the electronic circuits have removed the dependence on the human ear. The mechanized impactors have ensured uniformity of the tapping and increased the testing throughput while improving discontinuity detection performance. The tap test will eventually evolve into automated systems capable of imaging and quantitative analysis. However, the enhanced capabilities should not be achieved at the expense of the original advantages of simplicity and ease of field use. w x

Figure 8. Individual POD curve comparisons for advanced NDT techniques on a honeycomb panel with 6-ply fiberglass facesheet.

790

M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N J U LY 2 0 0 9

AUTHORS David K. Hsu: Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, Iowa State University, 1915 Scholl Road, Ames, IA 50011; (515) 294-2501; e-mail dkhsu@iastate.edu. Daniel J. Barnard: Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, Iowa State University, 1915 Scholl Road, Ames, IA 50011; (515) 294-2501; e-mail dbarnard@iastate.edu. Dennis P. Roach: Sandia National Laboratories, Box 5800, Albuquerque, NM 87185; (505) 844-6078; e-mail dproach@sandia.gov. REFERENCES Adams, R.D., A.M. Allen and P. Cawley, Nondestructive Inspection of Composite Structures by Low Velocity Impact, Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, Vol. 5B, D.O. Thompson and D.E. Chimenti, eds., New York, Plenum Press, 1986, pp. 12531258. Cawley, P. and R.D. Adams, Testing of Structures by Impact, US Patent No. 4,542,639, 1985. Georgeson, G.E., S. Lea and J. Hansen, Electronic Tap Hammer for Composite Damage Assessment, Proceedings of SPIE, Vol. 2945, 1996, pp. 328338. Georgeson, G.E., J.M. Hansen, J.R. Kollgaard, S.W. Lea and J.R. Bopp,

Damage Detection Device and Method, US Patent No. 6,748,791, 2004. Hsu, D.K., D.J. Barnard, J.J. Peters and V. Dayal, Physical Basis of Tap Test as a Quantitative Imaging Tool for Composite Structures on Aircraft, Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation, Vol. 19B, D.O. Thompson and D.E. Chimenti, eds., Melville, New York, AIP, 2000, pp. 18571864. Hsu, D.K., D.J. Barnard, J.J. Peters and N.A. Hudelson, Nondestructive Inspection and the Display of Inspection Results, US Patent No. 6,327,921, 2001. Mitsuhashi, K., C. Jyomuta, F. Oka and H. Nishikawa, Method and Apparatus for Impact-Type Inspection of Structures, US Patent No. 5,048,320, 1991. Pfund, B., Portable Test Hammer Apparatus, US Patent No. 5,686,652, 1996. Roach, D.P. and K.A. Rackow, Improving In-Service Inspection of Composite Structures: Its a Game of CATT and MAUS, FAA/NASA/DOD Conference on Aging Aircraft, September 2003. Wu, H. and M. Siegel, Correlation of Accelerometer and Microphone Data in the Coin-Tap Test, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 49, 2000, pp. 493497.

J U LY 2 0 0 9 M AT E R I A L S E VA L U AT I O N

791