COMPARISON OF ACTIVE THERMOGRAPHY TECHNIQUES FOR THE INSPECTION AND DEFECT CHARACTERISATION OF CARBON FIBER COMPOSITES

Henrique Fernandes¹; Marc Georges²; Georges Crabus²; Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo¹; Xavier Maldague¹

¹ Computer Vision and Systems Laboratory, Laval University; ² Centre Spatial de Liège, Université de Liège

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-1896

Resumo

Active thermography is a nondestructive testing (NDT) technique that has been gaining popularity in the aerospace industry, among several other fields. It has been proposed as an valuable alternative to well-known NDT methods such as radiography and ultrasound testing for the assessment of composites materials given its relatively ease of implementation, i.e. it is fast and allows the inspection of large surfaces in situ, at once and without the need of disassembling any component. In this work, different active thermography techniques (pulsed thermography, vibrothermography and line scan thermography) are examined in order to inspect carbon fiber academic samples with artificial defects (flat-bottom-holes). The advantages of each of these techniques are discussed and compared based on signal-to-noise calculations for defect detectability. A quantitative approach for depth retrieval with pulsed thermographic data is presented as well.

Palavras-chave: active thermography; pulsed thermography; vibrothermography; line scan thermography; carbon fiber composites