Infrared and thermal testing (IR), as a recently acknowledged nondestructive testing ,method, is particularly interesting for the testing of aerospace structures since it is possible to safely test large portions of surface areas in a fast manner without having to remove the part from the aircraft. Pulsed thermography is a commonly adapted configuration in which the surface component is stimulated with a high energy pulse and the cooling process is recorded with an infrared camera. Pulsed thermographic data, however, are contaminated with noise of many forms. Fortunately, numerous signal processing techniques are available allowing qualitative and quantitative analysis of data such as depth retrieval. In this paper, we discuss the effectiveness of active thermography for three different kinds of discontinuities. First, we study a monolithic carbon fiber reinforced plastic structure by analyzing 11 discontinuities of two diameters located at different depths. Then, 16 J impact damage on monolithic aircraft skin is studied. Finally, discontinuities inside an aerospace honeycomb are tested and characterized. An interesting approach is to use the phase evaluation to determine the depth under the surface. This study will compare two different techniques: a time based analysis made with the contrast evolutions and a blind frequency calculation made in the frequency domain. Each discontinuity is also tested using state of the art C-scan ultrasonic testing with 128 elements for comparison.
Characterization of manufacturing and maintenance of aerospace composite discontinuities using infrared thermography
Charakterisierung von Unstetigkeiten in Luftfahrtverbundwerkstoffen mittels Infrarotthermographie bei Fertigung und Instandsetzung
Materials Evaluation ; 66 , 9 ; 955-962
2008
8 Seiten, 10 Bilder, 4 Tabellen, 23 Quellen
Article (Journal)
English
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