In-plane local defect resonances for efficient vibrothermography of impacted carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP)

Abstract

It is well known that the efficiency of the vibrothermographic non-destructive testing (NDT) technique can be enhanced by taking advantage of local defect resonance (LDR) frequencies. Recently, the classical out-of-plane local defect resonance was extended towards in-plane LDR for enhanced efficiency of vibrometric NDT. This paper further couples the concept of this in-plane LDR to vibrothermography, on the basis of the promising potential of in-plane LDRs to enhance the rubbing (tangential) interaction and viscoelastic damping of defects. Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRPs) with barely visible impact damage (BVID) are inspected and the significant contribution of in-plane LDRs in vibrational heating is demonstrated. Moreover, it is shown that the defect thermal contrast induced by in-plane LDRs is so high that it allows for easy detection of BVID by live monitoring of infrared thermal images during a single broadband sweep excitation. Thermal and vibrational spectra of the inspected surface are studied and the dominant contribution of in-plane LDR in vibration-induced heating is demonstrated.