Computerized ultrasonic tomography for testing solid propellant rocket motors

Certain types of defects, such as inhomogeneities in, for example, a plastic-like propellant, are not easily detected by pulse-echo techniques, so a through transmission technique is required. However, the shape of the test object may not permit transmission through the object in any required direction as is normally necessary for computerized ultrasonic tomography.A solid propellant rocket motor is such an object and in the course of this work a scanning technique is employed together with a suitable reconstruction algorithm to obtain a reconstructed image of the cross-section under investigation, overcoming the problem of not being able to transmit pulses through the object along every line normally required. Both a computer simulation and a real system were realized for the test object and images were produced from both. The time of flight of an ultrasonic beam through the specimen is the parameter used in the reconstruction (sound velocity measurement).