Thermal Non-destructive Testing and Evaluation for Inspection of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers

Thermal Non-destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E) is crucial in ensuring the quality and safety of industrial materials, components, and structures. It serves as a key tool for assessing their operational reliability, thus enhancing safety in a wide range of industries. There is a growing demand for dependable, swift, remote, and secure inspection and assessment techniques to detect hidden flaws, especially for sustainable solutions prompts adjustments in design and manufacturing standards. Hidden defects often emerge during the service life of these materials and structures due to various stress factors, potentially resulting in catastrophic failures. This study delves into the optimal and dependable experimental method for conducting fast, remote, and secure inspections and assessments of carbon fiber reinforced polymer materials using Infrared Imaging (IRI) as part of Thermal Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation (TNDT&E). Additionally, it examines the post-processing approach associated with this technique. This perspective also sheds light on the current state-of-the-art infrared imaging methods employed in TNDT&E, emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses about their ability to detect subsurface defects present within the material Most of the methods discussed in previous research primarily focus on the thermal differences in specific areas of a sample using processed thermal images, even though these images come from analyzing a series of images captured over time. This study highlights the latest research in thermal/infrared non-destructive testing and evaluation, along with the related post-processing techniques. It aims to not only show hidden subsurface defects through thermal differences also provides information about how these defects change over time.