TY - JOUR A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane A1 - Röllig, Mathias A1 - Gower, M. A1 - Lodeiro, M. A1 - Baker, G. A1 - Monte, C. A1 - Adibekyan, A. A1 - Gutschwager, B. A1 - Knazowicka, L. A1 - Blahut, A. T1 - Evaluation of different techniques of active thermography for quantification of artificial defects in fiber-reinforced composites using thermal and phase contrast data analysis JF - International Journal of Thermophysics N2 - For assuring the safety and reliability of components and constructions in energy applications made of fiber-reinforced polymers (e.g., blades of wind turbines and tidal power plants, engine chassis, flexible oil and gas pipelines) innovative non-destructive testing methods are required. Within the European Project VITCEA complementary methods (shearography, microwave, ultrasonics and thermography) have been further developed and validated. Together with partners from the industry, test specimens have been constructed and selected on-site containing different artificial and natural defect artefacts. As base materials, carbon and glass fibers in different orientations and layering embedded in different matrix materials (epoxy, polyamide) have been considered. In this contribution, the validation of flash and lock-in thermography to these testing problems is presented. Data analysis is based on thermal contrasts and phase evaluation techniques. Experimental data are compared to analytical and numerical models. Among others, the influence of two different types of artificial defects (flat bottom holes and delaminations) with varying diameters and depths and of two different materials (CFRP and GFRP) with unidirectional and quasi-isotropic fiber alignment is discussed. KW - Active thermography KW - CFRP KW - GFRP KW - Delaminations KW - Flash excitation KW - Lock-in excitation PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10765-018-2378-z SN - 0195-928X SN - 1572-9567 VL - 39 IS - 5 SP - Article 61, 1 EP - 37 PB - Springer AN - OPUS4-44687 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Moskovchenko, A. I. A1 - Vavilov, V. P. A1 - Bernegger, Raphael A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane A1 - Chulkov, A. O. T1 - Detecting Delaminations in Semitransparent Glass Fiber Composite by Using Pulsed Infrared Thermography JF - Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation N2 - Thanks to its good strength/mass ratio, a glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) composite is a common material widely used in aviation, power production, automotive and other industries. In its turn, active infrared (IR) nondestructive testing (NDT) is a common inspection technique for detecting and characterizing structural defects in GFRP. Materials to be tested are typically subjected to optical heating which is supposed to occur on the material surface. However, GFRP composite is semitransparent for optical radiation of both visual and IR spectral bands. Correspondingly, the inspection process represents a certain combination of both optical and thermal phenomena. Therefore, the known characterization algorithms based on pure heat diffusion cannot be applied to semi-transparent materials. In this study, the phenomenon of GFRP semi-transparency has been investigated numerically and experimentally in application to thermal NDT. Both Xenon flash tubes and a laser have been used for thermal stimulation of opaque and semi-transparent test objects. It has been shown that the Penetration of optical heating radiation into composite reduces detectability of shallower defects, and the signal-to-noise ratio can be enhanced by applying the technique of thermographic signal reconstruction (TSR). In the inspection of the semi-transparent GFRP composite, the most efficient has been the laser heating followed by the TSR data processing. The perspectives of defect characterization of semi-transparent materials by using laser heating are discussed. A neural network has been used as a candidate tool for evaluating defect depth in composite materials, but its training should be performed in identical with testing conditions. KW - Infrared thermography KW - Thermal testing KW - GFRP KW - Semi-transparent composite KW - Laser heating PY - 2020 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-020-00717-x VL - 39 SP - 69 PB - Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020 AN - OPUS4-51179 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Müller, Jan P. A1 - Krankenhagen, Rainer T1 - Optimizing thermographic testing of thick GFRP plates by assessing the real energy absorbed within the material JF - Composite Structures N2 - Active thermography is a well suited non-destructive testing method for the challenging inspection of wind rotor blades. Since the GFRP structures are up to some centimetres thick, long pulse heating is required to provide an appropriate energy input into the structure. So far, no best practice exists to guarantee a reliable detection of deep-lying flaws. In this work, a step wedge specimen having a maximum thickness of 34mm is systematically investigated by experiment and well-matched simulations to assess the influence of the experimental parameters, like the absorbed energy, on thermal contrasts. Finally, a scheme to conduct full-scale test of a wind rotor blade in less than three hours is proposed. KW - Pulsed thermography KW - Wind rotor blade KW - GFRP PY - 2019 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2019.02.027 SN - 0263-8223 VL - 215 SP - 60 EP - 68 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-47396 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bernegger, Raphael A1 - Altenburg, Simon A1 - Roellig, Mathias A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane T1 - Applicability of a 1D analytical model for pulse thermography of laterally heterogeneous semitransparent materials JF - International Journal of Thermophysics N2 - Pulse thermography (PT) has proven to be a valuable non-destructive testing method to identify and quantify defects in fiber-reinforced polymers. To perform a quantitative defect characterization, the heat diffusion within the material as well as the material parameters must be known. The heterogeneous material structure of glass fiber-reinforced polymers (GFRP) as well as the semitransparency of the material for optical excitation sources of PT is still challenging. For homogeneous semitransparent materials, 1D analytical models describing the temperature distribution are available. Here, we present an analytical approach to model PT for laterally inhomogeneous semitransparent materials.We show the validity of the model by considering different configurations of the optical heating source, the IR camera, and the differently coated GFRP sample. The model considers the lateral inhomogeneity of the semitransparency by an additional absorption coefficient. It includes additional effects such as thermal losses at the samples surfaces, multilayer systems with thermal contact resistance, and a finite duration of the heating pulse. By using a sufficient complexity of the analytical model, similar values of the material parameters were found for all six investigated configurations by numerical fitting. KW - Absorption coefficient KW - Analytical model KW - GFRP KW - Heterogeneous KW - Pulse thermography KW - Semitransparent PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10765-018-2362-7 SN - 0195-928X SN - 1572-9567 VL - 39 IS - 3 SP - Article 39, ICPPP 19, 1 EP - 17 PB - Springer International Publishing AG AN - OPUS4-44003 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bernegger, Raphael A1 - Maierhofer, Christiane A1 - Altenburg, Simon T1 - Quantification of delaminations in semitransparent solids using pulsed thermography and mathematical 1D models JF - International Journal of Thermophysics volume N2 - Material defects in fiber reinforced polymers such as delaminations can rapidly degrade the material properties or can lead to the failure of a component. Pulse thermography (PT) has proven to be a valuable tool to identify and quantify such defects in opaque materials. However, quantification of delaminations within semitransparent materials is extremely challenging. We present an approach to quantify delaminations within materials being semitransparent within the wavelength ranges of the optical excitation sources as well as of the infrared (IR) camera. PT experimental data of a glass fiber reinforced polymer with a real delamination within the material were reconstructed by one dimensional (1D) mathematical models. These models describe the heat diffusion within the material and consider semitransparency to the excitation source as well to the IR camera, thermal losses at the samples surfaces and a thermal contact resistance between the two layers describing the delamination. By fitting the models to the PT data, we were able to determine the depth of the delamination very accurately. Additionally, we analyzed synthetic PT data from a 2D simulation with our 1D-models to show how the thermal contact resistance is influenced by lateral heat flow within the material. KW - Pulsed thermography KW - Quantification KW - Numerical simulation KW - Analytical model KW - Semitransparent KW - GFRP KW - Delamination PY - 2020 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-505766 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10765-020-02642-7 VL - 41 IS - 5 SP - Article number: 67 PB - Springer AN - OPUS4-50576 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -