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- 2016 (2) (entfernen)
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- Active Thermography (2) (entfernen)
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Within the field of optically excited thermography, full-field thermal imaging is used to characterize materials, to determine thicknesses of layers or to find inhomogeneities such as voids or cracks. Classical light sources, such as flash lamps (impulse heating) or halogen lamps (modulated heating), are hereby specifically used. This has led to the different testing methods lock-in and flash thermography. The VCSEL array promises to merge these excitation methods.
Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) are laser diodes emitting light perpendicular to their surface. Due to the vertical structure they can be arranged in large arrays of many thousand individual lasers and still be controlled like ordinary diode lasers. Recently a high-power albeit very compact version of such a VCSEL-array became available which offers both the fast timing behavior of lasers and large illumination areas. Moreover, it allows a spatial and temporal control of the heating because individual parts of the VCSEL-array can be controlled arbitrarily in frequency, amplitude, and phase.
Although the VCSEL-array has a high potential for a new range of applications, it is too early to proclaim them. As one out of very few labs, we already adopted to this new VCSEL technology and show a thorough characterization and first results obtained with a 2.4 kW device. Specifically, we will discuss
- the linearity between control voltage and optical output
- the minimal pulse duration
- the maximal applicable modulation frequency
- optical projection and its influence on the optical output
- spatial control of the illumination and thermal wave shaping
Our results indicate that a VCSEL-array can be used for conventional impulse (aka flash) thermography whereas pulse duration and power are instantaneously accessible compared to flash lamp excitation. In case of lock-in thermography, we can apply frequencies in excess of 200 Hz without a loss in amplitude or an after glowing of the source, making it attractive for photo thermal applications. Consequently, this means that the VCSEL-array is able to merge the two main excitation methods lock-in and impulse thermography.
Spatial and temporal control of thermal waves by using DMDs for interference based crack detection
(2016)
Active Thermography is a well-established non-destructive testing method and used to detect cracks, voids or material inhomogeneities. It is based on applying thermal energy to a samples’ surface whereas inner defects alter the non-stationary heat flow. Conventional excitation of a sample is hereby done spatially, either planar (e.g. using a lamp) or local (e.g. using a focused laser) and temporally, either pulsed or periodical. In this work we combine a high power laser with a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) allowing us to merge all degrees of freedom to a spatially and temporally controlled heat source. This enables us to exploit the possibilities of coherent thermal wave shaping. Exciting periodically while controlling at the same time phase and amplitude of the illumination source induces – via absorption at the sample’s surface - a defined thermal wave propagation through a sample. That means thermal waves can be controlled almost like acoustical or optical waves. However, in contrast to optical or acoustical waves, thermal waves are highly damped due to the diffusive character of the thermal heat flow and therefore limited in penetration depth in relation to the achievable resolution. Nevertheless, the coherence length of thermal waves can be chosen in the mm-range for modulation frequencies below 10 Hz which is perfectly met by DMD technology. This approach gives us the opportunity to transfer known technologies from wave shaping techniques to thermography methods. We will present experiments on spatial and temporal wave shaping, demonstrating interference based crack detection.