Active Thermographic Non-Destructive Inspection of CFRP

―Inspection Methods and Their Results―

Abstract

This paper focuses on non-destructive inspection methods of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) using infrared thermography. Infrared thermographic non-destructive inspection can be generally classified into two methods: passive and active thermography. In passive thermography, temperature changes caused by natural environmental conditions (e.g., solar radiation or temperature variation between daytime and night) are observed using an infrared camera. In contrast, an inspection object is artificially heated in active thermography, and temperature variation is monitored during or after the heating. In active thermography, many inspection methods differentiated by heating or the post-processing methods of the observed temperature data have been reported. This paper deals with several active thermography inspection methods (e.g., pulse thermography, pulse phase thermography using phase images obtained by Fourier transformation, laser scanning heating thermography, and ultrasound-excited thermography) and provides their results.