TY - JOUR A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Rupprecht, C. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Thermographic detection of internal defects using 2D photothermal super resolution reconstruction with sequential laser heating N2 - Thermographic photothermal super resolution reconstruction enables the resolution of internal defects/inhomogeneities below the classical limit, which is governed by the diffusion properties of thermal wave propagation. Based on a combination of the application of special sampling strategies and a subsequent numerical optimization step in post-processing, thermographic super resolution has already proven to be superior to standard thermographic methods in the detection of one-dimensional defect/inhomogeneity structures. In our work, we report an extension of the capabilities of the method for efficient detection and resolution of defect cross sections with fully two-dimensional structured laser-based heating. The reconstruction is carried out using one of two different algorithms that are proposed within this work. Both algorithms utilize the combination of several coherent measurements using convex optimization and exploit the sparse nature of defects/inhomogeneities as is typical for most nondestructive testing scenarios. Finally, the performance of each algorithm is rated on reconstruction quality and algorithmic complexity. The presented experimental approach is based on repeated spatially structured heating by a high power laser. As a result, a two-dimensional sparse defect/inhomogeneity map can be obtained. In addition, the obtained results are compared with those of conventional thermographic inspection methods that make use of homogeneous illumination. Due to the sparse nature of the reconstructed defect/inhomogeneity map, this comparison is performed qualitatively. KW - Thermography KW - Super resolution KW - NDT KW - Inspection KW - Internal defects PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-548351 DO - https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0088102 SN - 1089-7550 VL - 131 IS - 18 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - AIP Publishing AN - OPUS4-54835 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Krankenhagen, Rainer A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane ED - Maldague, X. T1 - Systematic errors in the evaluation of uncorrected data from thermographic lock-in measurements N2 - Lock-in thermography (LT) is based on the correct evaluation of phase differences between the temperature oscillations at different surface regions of the object under test during periodic heating. Since the usual heating procedures contain a DC component, the actual heating pattern achieved is not harmonic. This causes systematic deviations when phase differences are determined by means of harmonic analysis, e.g. with FFT analysis. The resulting errors depend clearly on the ratio between DC and AC amplitude, which is demonstrated at simulated and experimentally recorded temperature transients. Further experimental LT data obtained by different oscillating energy inputs showed a variety of possible shapes of transients with different DC components. T2 - 14th QIRT Conference CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 26.06.2018 KW - NDT KW - Lock-in Thermography KW - FFT PY - 2018 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-453768 SP - 539 EP - 547 PB - QIRT Council AN - OPUS4-45376 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Ricci, M. A1 - Laureti, S. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias ED - Maldague, X. T1 - Practical study on the thermographic detectability of internal defects using temporally structured laser heating N2 - Modern laser systems have proven to be highly versatile heat sources for active thermographic testing. Compared to more traditional light sources, e.g. flash or halogen lamps, their output power can be easily modulated at high rates, allowing a wide variety of complex excitations to be realized. Although their total optical output power can be theoretically scaled to arbitrary values, the maximum output power is practically limited by many factors: the maximum power that the sample under test can absorb without altering the lighted surface itself, the trade-off between irradiance and inspected area, the cost of the laser system, etc. Furthermore, when working with spatial modulator systems, the output power must be limited to avoid damaging such devices. Nevertheless, to guarantee a sufficient amount of heating even for highly thermally conductive materials and/or deeply buried defects, the heating times can be extended, e.g., either by using step heating, long pulse thermography, or by lock-in thermography with a continuously modulated heating. However, for all these approaches, the ranging capabilities of the thermographic defect detection are reduced due to the limited frequency content of the excitation. To tackle this problem, i.e. to increase the excitation energy while preserving its frequency content, new approaches have been developed in the last two decades, among them the use of coded excitations in combination with pulse-compression, and the use of multiple lock-in analysis or a frequency modulated excitation signal. The challenges of such temporally structured heating techniques are manifold, for example, the DC component inherent in optical heating must be taken into account. In general, a wider frequency bandwidth or greater variability of the frequency components also means greater complexity for signal generation and data processing. In this paper, temporally structured excitation schemes with different degrees of complexity are compared on a high-power laser system. T2 - 17th International Conference on Quantitative InfraRed Thermography 2024 CY - Zagreb, Croatia DA - 01.07.2024 KW - Thermography KW - Laser KW - NDT KW - Coded excitation KW - Defect identification PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-653790 DO - https://doi.org/10.21611/qirt-2024-077 SN - 2371-4085 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - QIRT Council AN - OPUS4-65379 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Puthiyaveettil, N. A1 - Kidangan, R. A1 - Unnikrishnakurup, Sreedhar A1 - Krishnamurthy, C. V. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Myrach, Philipp A1 - Balasubramaniam, K. T1 - Numerical study of laser line thermography for crack detection at high temperature N2 - The detection of cracks before the failure is highly significant when it comes to safety-relevant structures. Crack detection in metallic samples at high surface temperature is one of the challenging situation in manufacturing industries. Laser thermography has already proved its detection capability of surface cracks in metallic samples at room temperature. In this work a continuous wave (CW) laser use to generate a laser, which is using to scan the metal surface with notch. The corresponding heat distribution on the surface monitored using infrared thermal (IR) camera. A simplified 3D model for laser thermography is developed and validated with experimental results. A dedicated image processing algorithm developed to improve the detectability of the cracks. To understand the dependency of surface temperature, laser power, laser scanning speed etc. in defect detection, we carried out parametric studies with our validated model. Here we Report the capability of laser thermography in crack detection at elevated temperature. T2 - 14th Quantitative InfraRed Thermography Conference CY - Berlin, Germany DA - 25.06.2018 KW - Thermal contrast KW - Laser Thermography KW - FEM KW - Surface cracks KW - NDT PY - 2018 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-499113 DO - https://doi.org/10.21611/qirt.2018.076 SN - 2371-4085 VL - 2018 SP - 685 EP - 686 AN - OPUS4-49911 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Rupprecht, C. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Nondestructive thermographic detection of internal defects using pixel-pattern based laser excitation and photothermal super resolution reconstruction N2 - In this work, we present a novel approach to photothermal super resolution based thermographic resolution of internal defects using two-dimensional pixel pattern-based active photothermal laser heating in conjunction with subsequent numerical reconstruction to achieve a high-resolution reconstruction of internal defect structures. With the proposed adoption of pixelated patterns generated using laser coupled high-power DLP projector technology the complexity for achieving true two-dimensional super resolution can be dramatically reduced taking a crucial step forward towards widespread practical viability. Furthermore, based on the latest developments in high-power DLP projectors, we present their first application for structured pulsed thermographic inspection of macroscopic metal samples. In addition, a forward solution to the underlying inverse problem is proposed along with an appropriate heuristic to find the regularization parameters necessary for the numerical inversion in a laboratory setting. This allows the generation of synthetic measurement data, opening the door for the application of machine learning based methods for future improvements towards full automation of the method. Finally, the proposed method is experimentally validated and shown to outperform several established conventional thermographic testing techniques while conservatively improving the required measurement times by a factor of 8 compared to currently available photothermal super resolution techniques. KW - Thermography KW - Super resolution KW - NDT KW - Inspection KW - Internal defects KW - DMD KW - DLP PY - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-570551 DO - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30494-2 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 13 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Nature Research AN - OPUS4-57055 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hauffen, J. C. A1 - Kästner, L. A1 - Ahmadi, Samim A1 - Jung, P. A1 - Caire, G. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm for photothermal super resolution imaging N2 - Block-sparse regularization is already well known in active thermal imaging and is used for multiple-measurement-based inverse problems. The main bottleneck of this method is the choice of regularization parameters which differs for each experiment. We show the benefits of using a learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm (LBISTA) that is able to learn the choice of regularization parameters, without the need to manually select them. In addition, LBISTA enables the determination of a suitable weight matrix to solve the underlying inverse problem. Therefore, in this paper we present LBISTA and compare it with state-of-the-art block iterative shrinkage thresholding using synthetically generated and experimental test data from active thermography for defect reconstruction. Our results show that the use of the learned block-sparse optimization approach provides smaller normalized mean square errors for a small fixed number of iterations. Thus, this allows us to improve the convergence speed and only needs a few iterations to generate accurate defect reconstruction in photothermal super-resolution imaging. KW - Thermography KW - Laser KW - Machine learning KW - Optimization KW - Non-destructive testing KW - NDT KW - Neural network KW - Defect reconstruction KW - Block-sparsity KW - Active thermal imaging KW - Regularization KW - Laser thermography PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-554598 DO - https://doi.org/10.3390/s22155533 SN - 1424-8220 VL - 22 IS - 15 SP - 1 EP - 15 PB - MDPI CY - Basel AN - OPUS4-55459 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sobczak, M. A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Pieczonka, Ł. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Impact damage characterization on CFRP parts using laser line scanning active thermography N2 - This study presents a dual-path data processing framework for the detection and characterization of barely visible impact damage (BVID) in carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) structures using laser line thermography (LLT). A robotic LLT system was used to scan impacted CFRP specimens, and the resulting thermal sequences were analyzed using two complementary methods: full thermogram reconstruction followed by Pulse Phase Thermography (PPT) to detect subsurface delaminations, and Time-Summed Gradient Filtering (TSGF) to enhance surface-breaking cracks. Both processing paths produced interpretable results that were fused into a unified combined image and overlay mask, enabling simultaneous visualization of different defect types from a single scan. Quantitative analysis was performed on the binary masks to extract defect dimensions and Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values. The results demonstrated that delaminations and multiple cracks could be accurately detected and spatially distinguished, with good agreement to reference methods such as flash thermography and vibrothermography. This work highlights the potential of LLT as a versatile and scalable inspection technique, where multimodal defect detection and segmentation can be achieved through targeted processing and data fusion strategies. KW - Active thermography KW - CFRP KW - Laser line scanning KW - Delamination KW - Cracks KW - BVID KW - NDT PY - 2026 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-654097 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compositesb.2026.113425 SN - 1359-8368 VL - 313 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - Elsevier Ltd. AN - OPUS4-65409 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Rupprecht, C. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias T1 - Hochaufgelöste thermografische Detektion eingeschlossener Defekte mit Hilfe von 2Dstrukturierten Beleuchtungsmustern N2 - Für die aktive Thermografie als zerstörungsfreie Prüfmethode galt lange Zeit die Faustformel, dass die Auflösung interner Defekte/Inhomogenitäten auf ein Verhältnis von Defekttiefe/Defektgröße ≤ 1 beschränkt ist. Die Ursache hierfür liegt in der diffusiven Natur der Wärmeleitung in Festkörpern. Sogenannte Super-Resolution-Ansätze erlauben seit Kurzem die Überwindung dieser physikalischen Grenze um ein Vielfaches. Damit ergibt sich die attraktive Möglichkeit die Thermografie von einem rein oberflächensensitiven Prüfverfahren hin zu einem Verfahren mit verbesserter Tiefenreichweite zu entwickeln. Wie weit diese Entwicklung getrieben werden kann, ist Gegenstand aktueller Forschung. Wir konnten bereits zeigen, dass diese klassische Grenze für 1D- und 2D Defektgeometrien mit Hilfe des Abscannens des Prüfkörpers mittels einzelner Laserspots und der anschließenden Anwendung von photothermischer Super-Resolution-Rekonstruktion überwunden werden kann. Bei dieser Methode wird eine Kombination aus sequenzieller räumlich strukturierter Beleuchtung und numerischen Optimierungsmethoden eingesetzt. Dies geschieht allerdings auf Kosten der experimentellen Komplexität, die zu einer langen Messdauer, großen Datensätzen und langwieriger numerischer Auswertung führt. In dieser Arbeit berichten wir über einen neuen experimentellen Ansatz, bei dem räumlich strukturierte 2D-Beleuchtungsmuster in Verbindung mit Compressed-Sensing und Computational-Imaging-Methoden verwendet werden, um die experimentelle Komplexität deutlich zu verringern und die Methode für die Untersuchung größerer Prüfflächen nutzbar zu machen. Der experimentelle Ansatz basiert dabei auf der wiederholten (blinden) photothermischen Anregung mit räumlich strukturierten 2D-Mustern unter Verwendung moderner Projektortechnik und eines Hochleistungslasers. In der anschließenden numerischen Rekonstruktion werden mehrere Messungen unter Ausnutzung der Joint-Sparsity der Defekte innerhalb des Prüfkörpers mittels nichtlinearer konvexer Optimierungsmethoden kombiniert. Als Ergebnis kann eine 2D-sparse Defekt-/Inhomogenitätskarte erstellt werden. T2 - DGZfP-Jahrestagung 2022 CY - Kassel, Germany DA - 23.05.2022 KW - Thermografie KW - Super resolution KW - NDT KW - ZfP KW - Eingeschlossene Defekte KW - Projektor PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-548945 SN - 978-3-947971-25-1 VL - 177 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zerstörungsfreie Prüfung AN - OPUS4-54894 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Rupprecht, C. A1 - Ziegler, Mathias ED - Maldague, X. T1 - Detection of internal defects applying photothermal super resolution reconstruction utilizing two-dimensional high-power random pixel patterns N2 - In this work, we report on our progress for investigating a new experimental approach for thermographic detection of internal defects by performing 2D photothermal super resolution reconstruction. We use modern high-power laser projector technology to repeatedly excite the sample surface photothermally with varying spatially structured 2D pixel patterns. In the subsequent (blind) numerical reconstruction, multiple measurements are combined by exploiting the joint-sparse nature of the defects within the specimen using nonlinear convex optimization methods. As a result, a 2D-sparse defect/inhomogeneity map can be obtained. Using such spatially structured heating combined with compressed sensing and computational imaging methods allows to significantly reduce the experimental complexity and to study larger test surfaces as compared to the one-dimensional approach reported earlier. T2 - Quantitative Infrared Thermography 2022 CY - Paris, France DA - 04.07.2022 KW - Thermography KW - Super resolution KW - NDT KW - inspection KW - Internal defects KW - DMD KW - DLP PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-577795 DO - https://doi.org/10.21611/qirt.2022.1005 SN - 2371-4085 SP - 1 EP - 7 PB - QIRT Council AN - OPUS4-57779 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Yagdjian, H. A1 - Lecompagnon, Julien A1 - Hirsch, Philipp Daniel A1 - Ziegler, Mathias A1 - Gurka, M. T1 - Application of the thermal shock response spectrum (TSRS) methodology to various forms of heat sources by pulse thermography and comparison by using a rotating line scan contour search algorithm N2 - In this paper, we propose a novel contour search algorithm (CSA) for image processing. Its efficacy is evaluated through a comparative analysis with established techniques such as Canny Edge and Snakes: Active contour models, utilizing infrared thermography (IRT) images. Based on the new CSA, we investigate the influence of different pulse shapes on the IRT post-processing methodology, particularly focusing on the thermal shock response spectrum (TSRS), using two different heat sources: xenon flash lamps and a laser. Moreover, this allows for a more precise quantitative comparison of the TSRS with existing IRT post-processing techniques, including pulse phase thermography and thermal signal reconstruction, concerning the detection of defects in composite materials, particularly in carbon fiber-reinforced polymer. A quantitative comparison was performed using the Tanimoto criterion and signal-to-noise ratio. A more detailed analysis is conducted to identify inherent limitations and potential benefits of the new TSRS methodology. We further investigate and experimentally confirm our previous finding on the qualitative correlation between the one-dimensional thermal N-layer model and test data from the TSRS optimization process for defect determination. This correlation can eliminate the time-consuming optimization step, making TSRS a more attractive alternative to common IRT methods and enhancing the quantitative description of defects. KW - Thermography KW - Non-destructive testing KW - NDT KW - Defect identification KW - Laser KW - Contour search PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-615056 DO - https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0232015 SN - 1089-7550 VL - 136 IS - 175101 SP - 1 EP - 20 PB - AIP Publishing AN - OPUS4-61505 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -