Terahertz Non-Destructive Testing of Porosity in Multi-Layer Thermal Barrier Coatings Based on Small-Sample Data

Abstract

Accurately characterizing the internal porosity rate of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) was essential for prolonging their service life. This work concentrated on atmospheric plasma spray (APS)-prepared TBCs and proposed the utilization of terahertz non-destructive detection technology to evaluate their internal porosity rate. The internal porosity rates were ascertained through a metallographic analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), followed by the reconstruction of the TBC model using a four-parameter method. Terahertz time-domain simulation data corresponding to various porosity rates were generated employing the time-domain finite difference method. In simulating actual test signals, white noise with a signal-to-noise ratio of 10 dB was introduced, and various wavelet transforms were utilized for denoising purposes. The effectiveness of different signal processing techniques in mitigating noise was compared to extract key features associated with porosity. To address dimensionality challenges and further enhance model performance, kernel principal component analysis (kPCA) was employed for data processing. To tackle issues related to limited sample sizes, this work proposed to use the Siamese neural network (SNN) and generative adversarial network (GAN) algorithms to solve this challenge in order to improve the generalization ability and detection accuracy of the model. The efficacy of the constructed model was assessed using multiple evaluation metrics; the results indicate that the novel hybrid WT-kPCA-GAN model achieves a prediction accuracy exceeding 0.9 while demonstrating lower error rates and superior predictive performance overall. Ultimately, this work presented an innovative, convenient, non-destructive online approach that was safe and highly precise for measuring the porosity rate of TBCs, particularly in scenarios involving small sample sizes facilitating assessments regarding their service life.