Infrared thermography for CFRP inspection: Computational model and experimental results

Infrared Thermography (IRT) is a well-known Non-destructive Testing (NDT) technique. In the last decades, it has been widely applied in several fields including inspection of composite materials (CM), specially the fiber-reinforced polymer matrix ones. Consequently, it is important to develop and improve efficient NDT techniques to inspect and assess the quality of CM parts in order to warranty airworthiness and, at the same time, reduce costs of airline companies. In this paper, active IRT is used to inspect carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) at laminate with artificial inserts (built-in sample) placed on different layers prior to the manufacture. Two optical active IRT are used. The first is pulsed thermography (PT) which is the most widely utilized IRT technique. The second is a line-scan thermography (LST) technique: a dynamic technique, which can be employed for the inspection of materials by heating a component, line-by-line, while acquiring a series of thermograms with an infrared camera. It is especially suitable for inspection of large parts as well as complex shaped parts. A computational model developed using COMSOL Multiphysics^® was used in order to simulate the inspections. Sequences obtained from PT and LST were processed using principal component thermography (PCT) for comparison. Results showed that it is possible to detect insertions of different sizes at different depths using both PT and LST IRT techniques.