Active infrared thermography is a fast and accurate non-destructive evaluation technique that is of particular relevance to the aerospace industry for the inspection of aircraft and helicopters’ primary and secondary structures, aero-engine parts, spacecraft components and its subsystems. This review provides an exhaustive summary of most recent active thermographic methods used for aerospace applications according to their physical principle and thermal excitation sources. Besides traditional optically stimulated thermography, which uses external optical radiation such as flashes, heaters and laser systems, novel hybrid thermographic techniques are also investigated. These include ultrasonic stimulated thermography, which uses ultrasonic waves and the local damage resonance effect to enhance the reliability and sensitivity to micro-cracks, eddy current stimulated thermography, which uses cost-effective eddy current excitation to generate induction heating, and microwave thermography, which uses electromagnetic radiation at the microwave frequency bands to provide rapid detection of cracks and delamination. All these techniques are here analysed and numerous examples are provided for different damage scenarios and aerospace components in order to identify the strength and limitations of each thermographic technique. Moreover, alternative strategies to current external thermal excitation sources, here named as material-based thermography methods, are examined in this paper. These novel thermographic techniques rely on thermoresistive internal heating and offer a fast, low power, accurate and reliable assessment of damage in aerospace composites.

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Recent Advances in Active Infrared Thermography for Non-Destructive Testing of Aerospace Components.

This paper summarizes the basics of pulsed thermal nondestructive testing (TNDT) including theoretical solutions, data processing algorithms and practical implementation. Typical defects are discussed along with 1D analytical and multi-dimensional numerical solutions. Special emphasis is focused on defect characterization by the use of inverse solutions. A list of TNDT terms is provided. Applications of active TNDT, mainly in the aerospace industry, are discussed briefly, and some trends in the further development of this technique are described.

Review of pulsed thermal NDT: Physical principles, theory and data processing

Optically and non-optically excited thermography for composites: A review

Composite materials/structures are advancing in product efficiency, cost-effectiveness and the development of superior specific properties. There are increasing demands in their applications to loa...

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Non-destructive testing and evaluation of composite materials/structures: A state-of-the-art review

Eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) is an emerging nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) technique and has been applied for a wide range of conductive materials. In this paper, a single-channel blind source separation is proposed to process the ECPT image sequences. The proposed method enables: 1) automatically extract valuable spatial and time patterns according to the whole transient response behavior without any training knowledge, 2) automatically identify defect patterns and quantify the defects, and 3) to provide guidelines of choosing the optimal contrast functions that can improve the separation results. In this paper, both mathematical and physical models are discussed and linked. The basis of the selection of separated spatial and time patterns is also presented. In addition, an artificial slot and a thermal fatigue natural crack are applied to validate the proposed method.

Automatic Defect Identification of Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography Using Single Channel Blind Source Separation

Frequency modulated thermography is becoming a popular thermal non-destructive testing (TNDT) technique which like other active thermographic techniques, requires an external heating stimulus, preferably on a blackened surface. It is however, not immune to non-ideal situation like non-uniform heating and surface emissivity variation. The phase image helps to reduce the effect of surface emissivity variation to some extent, but is inadequate in case of large variations. Further, structural noise can significantly interfere with the process of defect detection, as in the case of carbon fibre composite materials. This paper proposes two image reconstruction algorithms for off-line reduction of structural noise. The first utilizes the periodic nature of structural noise if present, and removes it using 2-dimensional Fourier transformation and a spatial band-stop filter. The other uses time serial reconstruction algorithm to remove such noise. The latter was originally proposed by the authors to remove artifacts from surface emissivity variation on metallic samples. The performances of both algorithms are successfully demonstrated on a carbon fibre test piece, having 2mm, 4mm, and 6mm diameter back drilled holes at various depths ranging from 0.25mm to 2mm in steps of 0.25mm.

Structural noise reduction in frequency modulated thermal wave imaging of carbon fibre composite materials

An estimation of thermo-physical properties such as thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity and heat capacity are extremely important for any practical and industrial applications. Contact free and fast measurement approaches using active infrared thermography principles have shown prolific results in this regard. The present study demonstrates frequency modulated thermal wave imaging (FMTWI) as a fast and efficient in-plane thermal diffusivity measurement technique. Here, a novel photo-thermal excitation signal in the form of a chirp is applied on the sample surface and the thermal response is monitored using an infrared (IR) camera. The in-plane thermal diffusivity of any self-sustaining sample can be measured using the multiple phase information extracted from a single run of the experiment. The applied excitation signal is characterized by th e chirp bandwidth and time period which are also related to the noise-equivalent temperature (NET) of the IR camera used. The influences of these two parameters on the final thermal diffusivity results have been discussed. Experimental results from measurements done on standard anodic alumina (AAO) templates have been included.

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Krishnendu Chatterjee

Papers

Structural noise reduction in frequency modulated thermal wave imaging of carbon fibre composite materials

Influence of chirp time-bandwidth on frequency modulated thermal wave imaging based materials characterization technique