Contactless inspection of tubular inner surfaces – InSITUbes

Tubular structures are used in most industrial sectors. Present in numerous industrial processes for the transport of reagents, their injection or cooling devices, they are found especially in the agro-food, energy, pharmaceutical, chemical, aerospace, transportation or biomedical.

For many years the development of manufacturing techniques and material processing has enabled the miniaturization of these structures, whose internal diameters can get up to a few tenths of millimeters.

The return needs (in the injection engine for example) as well as the health requirements (in the agri-food and biomedical) necessitates an optimal control of the tubes inner surfaces. The minimization of surface roughness can induce avoiding bacterial contamination, optimize flow, to limit surface effects or to maximize the impact of reactive functionalised structure.

Thus, inspection of the roughness of these tubular structures is a normative requirement in many areas. However, inspection solutions, especially for small diameter tubes, are particularly invasive and complex to use.

This project proposes the development of a pre-industrial contactless demonstrator for inspection of tubular structures with submicron resolution. This technology, resulting from the encounter between the solutions from fundamental physics (optical near field probe) and microelectronics technologies (probes making process), allows the measurement of topography of the inner surface of tube diameters up to several hundreds microns.

The transfer of this technology may take various forms:
Partnership co-development with a manufacturer of inspection and licensing solutions
Measurement Services
Manufacturing and marketing of the device, via the creation of a business