4,133 research outputs found

    Infrared Thermography for Temperature Measurement and Non-Destructive Testing

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    The intensity of the infrared radiation emitted by objects is mainly a function of their temperature. In infrared thermography, this feature is used for multiple purposes: as a health indicator in medical applications, as a sign of malfunction in mechanical and electrical maintenance or as an indicator of heat loss in buildings. This paper presents a review of infrared thermography especially focused on two applications: temperature measurement and non-destructive testing, two of the main fields where infrared thermography-based sensors are used. A general introduction to infrared thermography and the common procedures for temperature measurement and non-destructive testing are presented. Furthermore, developments in these fields and recent advances are reviewed

    A Fundamental Experiment on Detecting Deficiency of Concrete Structure with Infrared Thermography

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    The deficiency inside concrete stuctures which induces deterioration of concrete strutures is a serious problem all over the world. In many cases, the deficiencies are hidden inside the concrete structures, and it is inpossible to observe the deficiencies with unaided eyes. The usual detection was performed by destructive testing methods. But destructive testing methods decrease the structures, and so are not good measurement. For not to destroy the structures, however, research concerned with the development of non-destructive testing of concrete has nearly all taken place during the past 46 years . But the applied infrared thermography to detect the deterioration of concrete strutures was only 23 years. Infrared thermography has been found capable of detecting delamination because there is a difference in the surface temperature of sound and delaminated concrete structures under heated conditions. This article describes the fundamental experiment of detectiong the cavities inside concrete structures with infrared thermography

    Application of non destructive testing to the detection of aeronautical defects in composite structures

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    A study of two Non-destructive Testing methods (NDT) was carried out in specimens with different kinds of simulated defects. Ultrasonics test (US) and Infrared Thermography (IRT) were applied with the aim to evaluate the detectability and the accuracy of each method.These techniques have acquired great importance in the aeronautics industry because they allow to control the aerostructures without intervening in their physical and mechanical integrity. In the second part of the study, a comparison of both techniques was achieved in order toanalyse their limits and advantages. It appeared that detectability of defects was much better in a sample with flat-bottomed holes defects in the case of Ultrasonic Test. However it was found that Infrared Thermography is much more limited to the thickness of the specimen than the ultrasonic waves. On the other hand, defects were all revealed with IRT in a sandwich composite including Teflon inserts, which was not the case for US

    Multi-scale gapped smoothing algorithm for robust baseline-free damage detection in optical infrared thermography

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    Flash thermography is a promising technique to perform rapid non-destructive testing of composite materials. However, it is well known that several difficulties are inherently paired with this approach, such as non-uniform heating, measurement noise and lateral heat diffusion effects. Hence, advanced signal-processing techniques are indispensable in order to analyze the recorded dataset. One such processing technique is Gapped Smoothing Algorithm, which predicts a gapped pixel’s value in its sound state from a measurement in the defected state by evaluating only its neighboring pixels. However, the standard Gapped Smoothing Algorithm uses a fixed spatial gap size, which induces issues to detect variable defect sizes in a noisy dataset. In this paper, a Multi-Scale Gapped Smoothing Algorithm (MSGSA) is introduced as a baseline-free image processing technique and an extension to the standard Gapped Smoothing Algorithm. The MSGSA makes use of the evaluation of a wide range of spatial gap sizes so that defects of highly different dimensions are identified. Moreover, it is shown that a weighted combination of all assessed spatial gap sizes significantly improves the detectability of defects and results in an (almost) zero-reference background. The technique thus effectively suppresses the measurement noise and excitation non-uniformity. The efficiency of the MSGSA technique is evaluated and confirmed through numerical simulation and an experimental procedure of flash thermography on carbon fiber reinforced polymers with various defect sizes

    Degradation assessment of industrial composites using thermography

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    Thermographic inspection is a relatively new technique for Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) which has been gathering increasing interest due to its relatively low cost hardware and extremely fast data acquisition properties. This technique is especially promising in the area of rapid automated damage detection and quantification. In collaboration with a major industry partner from the aerospace sector advanced thermography-based NDT software for impact damaged composites is introduced. The software is based on correlation analysis of time-temperature profiles in combination with an image enhancement process. The prototype software is aiming to a) better visualise the damages in a relatively easy-to-use way and b) automatically and quantitatively measure the properties of the degradation. Knowing that degradation properties play an important role in the identification of degradation types, tests and results on specimens which were artificially damaged have been performed and analyzed.EPSR

    Damage investigation in CFRP composites using full-field measurement techniques: combination of digital image stereo-correlation, infrared thermography and X-ray tomography

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    The present work is devoted to damaging process in carbon–fiber reinforced laminated composites. An original experimental approach combining three optical measurement techniques is presented. Image stereo-correlation and infrared thermography, that respectively provide the kinematic and thermal fields on the surface of the composites, are used in live recording during axis and off-axis tensile tests. Special attention is paid to simultaneously conduct these two techniques while avoiding their respective influence. On the other hand, X-ray tomography allows a post-failure analysis of the degradation patterns within the laminates volume. All these techniques are non-destructive (without contact) and offer an interesting full-field investigation of the material response. Their combination allows a coupled analysis of different demonstrations of same degradation mechanisms. For instance, thermal events and densimetric fields show a random location of damage in the early stages of testing. The influence of the material initial anisotropy on damage growth, localization and failure mode can also be clearly put in evidence through various data. In addition to such characterization, this study illustrates at the same time the capabilities of the different full-field techniques and the damage features they can best capture respectively

    Non destructive investigation of defects in composite structures by three infrared thermographic techniques

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    This paper investigates full-field measurement techniques based on Infrared Thermography for Non Destructive Testing (NDT) applications on composite materials. Three methods have been implemented and the paper intends to characterize and compare their defect detection limit and related specific application fields. Various composites have been considered in this study, namely laminates and sandwich structures, in order to address many important issues of performance assessment for the aviation industry

    Infrared Thermography for Weld Inspection: Feasibility and Application

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    Traditional ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques have been widely used to detect surface and sub-surface defects of welds. UT inspection is a contact method which burdens the manufacturer by storing hot specimens for inspection when the material is cool. Additionally, UT is only valid for 5 mm specimens or thicker and requires a highly skilled operator to perform the inspections and interpret the signals. Infrared thermography (IRT) has the potential to be implemented for weld inspections due to its non-contact nature. In this study, the feasibility of using IRT to overcome the limitations of UT inspection is investigated to detect inclusion, porosity, cracking, and lack of fusion in 38 weld specimens with thicknesses of 3, 8 and 13 mm. UT inspection was also performed to locate regions containing defects in the 8 mm and 13 mm specimens. Results showed that regions diagnosed with defects by the UT inspection lost heat faster than the sound weld. The IRT method was applied to six 3 mm specimens to detect their defects and successfully detected lack of fusion in one of them. All specimens were cut at the locations indicated by UT and IRT methods which proved the presence of a defect in 86% of the specimens. Despite the agreement with the UT inspection, the proposed IRT method had limited success in locating the defects in the 8 mm specimens. To fully implement in-line IRT-based weld inspections more investigations are required

    Thermographic non-destructive evaluation for natural fiber-reinforced composite laminates

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    Natural fibers, including mineral and plant fibers, are increasingly used for polymer composite materials due to their low environmental impact. In this paper, thermographic non-destructive inspection techniques were used to evaluate and characterize basalt, jute/hemp and bagasse fibers composite panels. Different defects were analyzed in terms of impact damage, delaminations and resin abnormalities. Of particular interest, homogeneous particleboards of sugarcane bagasse, a new plant fiber material, were studied. Pulsed phase thermography and principal component thermography were used as the post-processing methods. In addition, ultrasonic C-scan and continuous wave terahertz imaging were also carried out on the mineral fiber laminates for comparative purposes. Finally, an analytical comparison of different methods was give
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