Analysis of signal processing techniques in pulsed thermography

Abstract

Pulsed Thermography (PT) is one of the most widely used approaches for the inspection of composites materials, being its main attraction the deployment in transient regime. However, due to the physical phenomena involved during the inspection, the signals acquired by the infrared camera are nearly always affected by external reflections and local emissivity variations. Furthermore, non-uniform heating at the surface and thermal losses at the edges of the material also represent constraints in the detection capability. For this reason, the thermographics signals should be processed in order to improve – qualitatively and quantitatively – the quality of the thermal images. Signal processing constitutes an important step in the chain of thermal image analysis, especially when defects characterization is required. Several of the signals processing techniques employed nowadays are based on the one-dimensional solution of Fourier’s law of heat conduction. This investigation brings into discussion the three-most used techniques based on the 1D Fourier’s law: Thermographic Signal Reconstruction (TSR), Differential Absolute Contrast (DAC) and Pulsed Phase Thermography (PPT), applied on carbon fiber laminated composites. It is of special interest to determine the detection capabilities of each technique, allowing in this way more reliable results when performing an inspection by PT.