Automatic defect detection and depth estimation using pulsed thermography

L’évaluation non-destructive (END) est une branche de la science qui s’intéresse à l’uniformité, la qualité et la conformité des matériaux et les composants qu’ils servent à construire. Les techniques de END visent à repérer et à mesurer les caractéristiques principales des matériaux sans en affecter ou à en détruire la structure ou la fonctionnalité. L’END permet d’observer les propriétés internes des pièces et de détecter les défauts sous leur surface. Cette approche est devenue graduellement une technologie importante pour garantir la sécurité et la fiabilité de plusieurs composantes de système en design, en fabrication et en développement de produits. La thermographie infrarouge est une approche d’END sans contact rapide qui utilise des caméras thermiques. Elle permet de détecter l’énergie thermique émise par les objets et à en afficher la distribution en température de la surface du spécimen sous observation. Dans ce projet, notre objectif est d’exploiter la thermographie infrarouge pour détecter les défauts sous la surface des objets. Plus spécialement, nous nous intéressons à la localisation des défauts et à l’estimation de leur profondeur sous la surface. Le manuscrit présente une investigation de différentes méthodes de localisation de défauts et de mesure de leur profondeur des défauts sous la surface pour différentes catégories de matériaux.Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) is an aspect of science concerning on uniformity, quality and serviceability of materials and their components. NDT techniques attempt to inspect and measure significant features of materials without changing or destroying their structure or functionality. NDT makes it possible to observe the internal properties of parts and detect the undersurface defects. NDT has progressively become an important technology to assure safety and reliability of many system components in the design, manufacturing and development areas. Infrared thermography is essentially a fast non-contact NDT inspection method that uses thermographic cameras. This technique detects the infrared energy emitted from objects and displays the corresponding temperature distributions on the specimen. In this project, we aim to use infrared thermography for detecting subsurface defects. Localizing the defects and estimating their depths are the important problems to be addressed in our research project. The manuscript investigates different methods related to these challenges

An active infrared thermography method for fiber orientation assessment of fiber-reinforced composite materials

Fiber orientation in composite materials is an important feature since the arrangement or orientation of the fibers relative to one another has a significant influence on the strength and other properties of fiber reinforced composites. In this paper we present a method to assess the fiber orientation on the surface of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates. More specifically, a diode-laser beam is used to locally heat a small spot on the surface of the sample. Observation of the heat pattern in the infrared spectrum enables the assessment of the fiber orientation. Different samples and different regions on the surface of the samples are tested in order to estimate the precision of the method

Study of time-lapse processing for dynamic hydrologic conditions

The usefulness of dynamic display techniques in exploiting the repetitive nature of ERTS imagery was investigated. A specially designed Electronic Satellite Image Analysis Console (ESIAC) was developed and employed to process data for seven ERTS principal investigators studying dynamic hydrological conditions for diverse applications. These applications include measurement of snowfield extent and sediment plumes from estuary discharge, Playa Lake inventory, and monitoring of phreatophyte and other vegetation changes. The ESIAC provides facilities for storing registered image sequences in a magnetic video disc memory for subsequent recall, enhancement, and animated display in monochrome or color. The most unique feature of the system is the capability to time lapse the imagery and analytic displays of the imagery. Data products included quantitative measurements of distances and areas, binary thematic maps based on monospectral or multispectral decisions, radiance profiles, and movie loops. Applications of animation for uses other than creating time-lapse sequences are identified. Input to the ESIAC can be either digital or via photographic transparencies

LANDSAT land cover analysis completed for CIRSS/San Bernardino County project

The LANDSAT analysis carried out as part of Ames Research Center's San Bernardino County Project, one of four projects sponsored by NASA as part of the California Integrated Remote Sensing System (CIRSS) effort for generating and utilizing digital geographic data bases, is described. Topics explored include use of data-base modeling with spectral cluster data to improve LANDSAT data classification, and quantitative evaluation of several change techniques. Both 1976 and 1979 LANDSAT data were used in the project