Towards Optimisation of Forced Heating and Cooling Automated Infrared Thermograph

Abstract

Arguably the two most important characteristics (other than quality of inspection) of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods are speed and non-contact inspection. These attributes coupled with real-time, automated, online and/or in-situ methods give an insight into what is expected of future inspection systems. Thermographic imaging methods over the years have been found to be well suited to meet some of these requirements. In this work a novel real-time low-cost automated heating and cooling thermographic system tailored for use within the Industry 4.0 paradigm is evaluated. The focus of this work was to improve damage detection and imaging by the optimisation of heating and/or cooling of components after manufacturing or during maintenance cycles. By changing the heating and cooling patterns during real-time automated inspection the thermographic process can be optimised for damage detection. A carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite sample with flat bottom holes (FBH) was used to evaluate the effective of changing heating and cooling patterns. The system was assessed using three heating/cooling profiles: heating only (HO), cooling only (CO) and heating and cooling (HC). The results show that heating and cooling patterns can play an important role in improving the effectiveness of thermography.