TY - JOUR A1 - Metz, Christian A1 - Franz, Philipp A1 - Fischer, C. A1 - Wachtendorf, Volker A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane T1 - Active thermography for quality assurance of 3D-printed polymer structures N2 - Additively manufactured test specimens made of polyamide 12 (PA 12) by Laser Sintering as well as of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) by Fused Layer Modelling, were characterised with active thermography directly after manufacturing and after artificial weathering. For this, two different excitation methods (flash and pulse heating) were used and compared, regarding their suitability for the detection of constructed and imprinted defects inside the test specimens. To increase the quality of the thermograms, data processing methods like thermal signal reconstruction (TSR) and Fourier Transformation after TSR were applied. To further investigate the long-term stability of the additively manufactured test specimens towards environmental stress, like UV radiation, heat, humidity, water contact and frost with active thermography, an artificial weathering test over 2000 hours (~3 months) was applied to the specimens. The monitoring of the changes in the optical properties of the weathered plastics was supplemented by spectral reflectance and UV/VIS spectroscopy. KW - Additive manufacturing KW - Polymers KW - Artificial weathering KW - Active thermography KW - UV/VIS spectroscopy PY - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/17686733.2019.1686896 SN - 1768-6733 (Print) 2116-7176 (Online) VL - 18 IS - 1 SP - 50 EP - 72 PB - Taylor & Francis AN - OPUS4-49817 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -