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Impulse and lock-in thermography have been applied to detect delaminations of prototype solder joints, similar to those to be produced between Cu shunts and Cu busbar stabilisers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Two infrared cameras with different detector materials and with different spectral ranges and two excitation techniques have been tested and compared for their ability to detect delaminations behind 2 and 3 mm thick Cu shunts. We have analyzed the signal to noise ratio (SNR) for each detected defect and are able to detect defects down to a nominal edge length of 4 mm behind 2 mm thick Cu shunts by using fast impulse thermography and a camera with a microbolometer array. For the 3 mm thick Cu shunt, on the other hand, the nominal 4 mm defect is only visible in the lock-in thermography phase images and the highest SNR has been achieved with a cooled InSb-based camera. In addition, numerical simulations show the influence of the minimum detectable defect size on the shunt thickness and that the developed on-site testing technique is sufficient to find all defects that are detectable theoretically.
We combine three different approaches to greatly enhance the defect reconstruction ability of active thermographic testing. As experimental approach, laser-based structured illumination is performed in a step-wise manner. As an intermediate signal processing step, the virtual wave concept is used in order to effectively convert the notoriously difficult to solve diffusion-based inverse problem into a somewhat milder wavebased inverse problem. As a final step, a compressed-sensing based optimization procedure is applied which efficiently solves the inverse problem by making advantage of the joint sparsity of multiple blind measurements. To evaluate our proposed processing technique, we investigate an additively manufactured stainless steel sample with eight internal defects. The concerted super resolution approach is compared to conventional thermographic reconstruction techniques and shows an at least four times better spatial resolution.
Mechanisms and fast kinetics of the catastrophic optical damage (COD) in GaAs-based diode lasers
(2011)
COD diagram determined for a batch of broad-area AlGaAs diode lasers. The time to COD within a single current pulse is plotted versus the actual average optical power in the moment when the COD takes place. Full circles stand for clearly identified COD events (right ordinate), whereas open circles (left ordinate) represent the pulse duration in experiments, where no COD has been detected. A borderline (gray) exists between two regions, i. e., parameter sets, of presence (orange) and absence of COD (blue). This borderline is somewhat blurred because of the randomness in filamentation of the laser nearfield and scatter in properties of the involved individual devices.
We report on photothermal detection of subsurface defects by coherent superposition of thermal wave fields. This is made possible by structured heating using high-power VCSEL laser arrays whose individual emitter groups can be arbitrarily controlled. In order to locate the defects, we have developed a scanning method based on the continuous wavelet transformation with complex Morlet wavelet using the destructive interference effect of thermal waves. This approach can also be used for thermally very fast and highly reflective materials such as uncoated aluminum. We show that subsurface defects at an aspect ratio of defect width to defect depth down to 1/3 are still detectable in this material.
Learned block iterative shrinkage thresholding algorithm for photothermal super resolution imaging
(2022)
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.
The coherent superposition of two anti-phased thermal wave fields creates a zone of destructive interference which is extremely sensitive to the presence of defects without any reference measurements.
Combining a high power laser with a spatial light modulator allows modulating phase and amplitude of an illuminated surface that induces spatially and temporally controlled thermal wave fields. The position and depth of defects are reconstructed from analysis of the Amplitude and Phase of the resulting photothermal signal. The proposed concept is experimentally validated and supported by numerical modeling.
Crack detection in metallic samples at high surface temperature, hostile and hazardous environments, etc. is challenging situation in any manufacturing industries. Most of the present NDE methods are suitable only for lower surface temperatures, especially room temperature. In this situation, we need a fast and non-contact NDT method which can be applied even in high sample surface temperature. Laser thermography is one of the techniques having a high potential in non-contact inspection. As a preliminary investigation, in this article, we have studied the potentiality of laser line thermography in crack detection at room temperature. In laser line thermography, a continuous wave (CW) laser is used to generate a laser line, which in turn is used to scan the metal surface. The heat distribution over the sample surface is recorded by an infrared thermal (IR) camera. Two different approaches are reported in this work. Firstly, a stationary laser line source and its interaction with cracks; secondly, moving laser line source scanning over a surface with crack. When the distance between crack centre to laser line centre increases, crack detectability will decrease; and when laser power increases, crack detectability will increase. A dedicated image processing algorithm was developed to improve the detectability of the cracks. To understand the heat transfer phenomenon, a simplified 3D model for laser thermography was developed for the heat distribution during laser heating and was validated with experimental results. Defects were incorporated as a thermally thin resistive layer (TTRL) in numerical modeling, and the effect of TTRL in heat conduction is compared with experimental results.
Laser excited super resolution thermal imaging for nondestructive inspection of internal defects
(2020)
A photothermal super resolution technique is proposed for an improved inspection of internal defects. To evaluate the potential of the laser-based thermographic technique, an additively manufactured stainless steel specimen with closely spaced internal cavities is used. Four different experimental configurations in transmission, reflection, stepwise and continuous scanning are investigated. The applied image post-processing method is based on compressed sensing and makes use of the block sparsity from multiple measurement events. This concerted approach of experimental measurement strategy and numerical optimization enables the resolution of internal defects and outperforms conventional thermographic inspection techniques.
Spot welding is one of the most important joining technologies, especially in the automotive industry. Hitherto,the quality of spot welded joints is tested mainly by random destructive tests. A nondestructive testing technique offers the benefit of cost reduction of the testing procedure and optimization of the fabrication process, because every joint could be examined. This would lead to a reduced number of spot welded joints, as redundancies could be avoided. In the procedure described here, the spot welded joint between two zinc-coated steel sheets (HX340LAD+Z100MB or HC340LA+ZE 50/50) is heated optically on one side. Laser radiation and flash light are used as heat sources. The melted zone, the so called “weld nugget” provides the mechanical stability of the connection, but also constitutes a thermal bridge between the sheets. Due to the better thermal contact, the spot welded joint reveals a thermal behavior different from the surrounding material, where the heat transfer between the two sheets is much lower. The difference in the transient thermal behavior is measured with time resolved thermography. Hence, the size of the thermal contact between the two sheets is determined, which is directly correlated to the size of the weld nugget, indicating the quality of the spot weld. The method performs well in transmission with laser radiation and flash light. With laser radiation, it works even in reflection geometry, thus offering the possibility of testing with just one-sided accessibility. By using heating with collimated laser radiation, not only contactfree, but also remote testing is feasible. A further convenience compared to similar thermographic approaches is the applicability on bare steel sheets without any optical coating for emissivity correction. For this purpose, a proper way of emissivity correction was established.
Active thermography as a nondestructive testing modality suffers greatly from the limitations imposed by the diffusive nature of heat conduction in solids. As a rule of thumb, the detection and resolution of internal defects/inhomogeneities is limited to a defect depth to defect size ratio greater than or equal to one. Earlier, we demonstrated that this classical limit can be overcome for 1D and 2D defect geometries by using photothermal laser-scanning super resolution. In this work we report a new experimental approach using 2D spatially structured illumination patterns in conjunction with compressed sensing and computational imaging methods to significantly decrease the experimental complexity and make the method viable for investigating larger regions of interest.
In this work, the limits of using spatially structured heating combined with subsequent photothermal super resolution reconstruction for the thermographic detection and resolution of internal defects are investigated. The approach is based on the application of modern high-power laser projector technology, which is used to repeatedly project varying spatially structured 2D pixel patterns to photothermally heat the object under test. After processing the generated thermographic data using nonlinear convex optimisation in conjunction with exploiting the joint-sparse nature of the defect signals within the individual measurements, a high-resolution 2D-sparse defect/inhomogeneity map is obtained. The main focus of the investigation is set on the influence of the number of individual measurements on the achievable reconstruction quality. Using numerical simulations based on an analytical representation of the forward solution to the underlying inverse problem, the convergence rate over performed measurements of the achievable reconstruction quality is determined. Finally, all findings are experimentally validated by reconstructing a set of internal defects in an additively manufactured sample. In this work, it is shown that for a variety of different defect separation distances, the projection of 50 different pixel patterns allows for a good trade-off between experimental complexity and reconstruction quality.
We present a systematic study on the performance of laser-thermography for the detection of surface cracks in metallic components. Scanning a metallic surface with laser causes local heating that is mapped simultaneously by an IR-camera and allows identifying cracks with sub-µm openings. The detectability, however, depends on a number of acquisition parameters (e.g. scanning speed, laser power, IR-camera resolution) that typically relate on each other. Most importantly, the detection-sensitivity of surface breaking cracks is given by a particular combination for the acquisition parameter values. As a result, this sensitivity is adaptable within wide ranges allowing the detection of cracks with openings ranging from 200 to 0.1 µm at testing speeds of 100 to 0.05 cm²/s. By examining artificial as well as fatigue cracks, we demonstrate that the method can be even applied to shiny surfaces with no need of pretreatments, which makes it an entirely contactless, remote and automatable NDT technique. A comparison with magnetic particle testing shows that laser-thermography has the potential to become a strong competitor to conventional surface inspection methods in the future.
In-line laser thermography for crack detection at elevated temperature: A Numerical modeling study
(2016)
The detection and characterization of cracks prior to damage is a technologically and economically highly significant task and is of very importance when it comes to safety-relevant structures. The evaluation of a components life is closely related to the presence of cracks in it. Laser thermography has already high capability for the detection of surface cracks and for the characterization of the geometry of artificial surface flaws in metallic samples. Crack detection in metallic samples at high temperature is highly significant in present manufacturing scenario. During the casting process of billets, surface cracks form, due to the suboptimal cooling rates. These cracks reduce value of the billet and must be removed using machining process after cooling. This secondary process increases cost of manufacturing. In this work we developed a heat transfer model for laser thermography to study the thermal contrast variation with increase in surface temperature using finite element method (FEM). Here we are mainly concentrating the capability of the scanning laser thermography in crack detection which are in elevated temperature and numerical modeling study of thermal contrast variation of crack with respect increase in metal surface temperature. This study is important to prove the capability of laser thermography for crack detection in elevated temperature. Since we are using High power CW Laser to local heating of the metal surface which can give relatively high thermal contrast even at elevated temperature compare to other heating source. Here we are modeled and simulated 2D laser scanning across a surface breaking crack and developed an algorithm to produce the vicinity of crack. The algorithm we developed applied for various surface temperature data. And validated the credibility of the algorithm with experimental data.
Thermographic super-resolution techniques allow the resolution of defects/inhomogeneities beyond the classical limit, which is governed by the diffusion properties of thermal wave propagation. Photothermal super-resolution is based on a combination of an experimental scanning strategy and a numerical optimization which has been proven to be superior to standard thermographic methods in the case of 1D linear defects. In this contribution, we report on the extension of this approach towards a full frame 2D photothermal super-resolution technique. The experimental approach is based on a repeated spatially structured heating using high power lasers. In a second post-processing step, several measurements are coherently combined using mathematical optimization and taking advantage of the (joint) sparsity of the defects in the sample. In our work we extend the possibilities of the method to efficiently detect and resolve defect cross sections with a fully 2D-structured blind illumination.
The method described here allows to determine the size of the thermal contact between two metal sheets joined by spot welding. This size is a measure for the size of the weld nugget, i.e. the zone melted during the welding process, and thus the quality of the welded joint. The method applies active thermography in transmission or reflection setup. Especially the reflection setup offers an attractive possibility for non-destructive testing when components can be accessed from one side only. The spot weld region is optically heated by laser or flash light radiation. The weld nugget provides the mechanical joint, but also constitutes a thermal bridge between the two welded sheets. The latter will be exploited in this method. The better thermal contact at the weld Nugget contrasts with the surrounding material, where the heat transfer between the two sheets is comparatively low. A major advantage of the described method is the applicability on sheets without any surface treatment. This is achieved by a proper normalization of the data, allowing for a correction of the varying surface emissivity.
We present an all-purpose crack detection algorithm for flying spot thermography which is directly applicable to a thermogram sequence without the need of any additional information about the experimental setup. A single image containing distinct crack signatures is derived in two steps. Firstly, the spatial derivative is calculated for each frame of the sequence and, secondly, the resulting data set is sorted pixel wise along the time axis. The feasibility of the proposed procedure is proven by testing a piece of rail that comprises roll contact fatigue cracks and by comparing the results with magnetic particle testing.
Crack detection in steel bars at high surface temperatures is a critical problem in any manufacturing industry. Surface breaking cracks are the major problems during the billet casting. Many NDT techniques are proven its capability in crack detection at room temperature. Here, we are demonstrating the possibility of exposure of cracks using laser line thermography at higher surface temperatures (up to 600 °C). A continuous-wave (CW) laser is used to excite the sample kept at higher surface temperatures. The temperature distribution over the sample due to the laser line scanning is captured using a temperature calibrated infrared (IR) thermal camera. The response of the sample temperature in crack detection is investigated using a validated FE model. The impact of the oxide layer in crack detection is investigated by using two types of samples; one without any oxide layer and the second is with the oxide layer. The influence of laser power in the detection of defects at high temperatures is studied. 3D numerical models were developed for the cases; when the sample is with oxide layer and without any oxide layer for a better understanding of physics. The surface temperature rise due to laser heating is higher for the scaled sample compared to the no-scale sample. The presence of the oxide layer above the parent metal will reduce the reflectivity of the surface. Lower reflectivity will lead to increased absorption of incident energy so that the surface temperature rise will be higher than the surface with no scale. Thermal contrast linearly depends on laser power, which means higher laser power will increase the defect detectability even at a higher surface temperature.
Classification of Spot-Welded Joints in Laser Thermography Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks
(2021)
Spot welding is a crucial process step in various industries. However, classification of spot welding quality is still a tedious process due to the complexity and sensitivity of the test material, which drain conventional approaches to its limits. In this article, we propose an approach for quality inspection of spot weldings using images from laser thermography data. We propose data preparation approaches based on the underlying physics of spot-welded joints, heated with pulsed laser thermography by analyzing the intensity over time and derive dedicated data filters to generate training datasets. Subsequently, we utilize convolutional neural networks to classify weld quality and compare the performance of different models against each other. We achieve competitive results in terms of classifying the different welding quality classes compared to traditional approaches, reaching an accuracy of more than 95 percent. Finally, we explore the effect of different augmentation methods.
Single-pulse tests of the catastrophic optical damage (COD) are performed for three batches of diode lasers with different gain-regions. The tests involve in situ inspection of front, rear, and side of the devices by a thermocamera. Devices with an Al-containing gain-region show COD at the front facet, as expected for strong facet heating via surface recombination and reabsorption of laser light. In contrast, Al-free devices with low surface recombination rates tend to fail at the rear facet, pointing to a different heating scenario. The high carrier density at the rear facet favors heating and COD via Auger recombination processes.
The paper presents an attempt for the calibration of an active
thermography method that is suitable for the non-destructive
evaluation of spot welds. Nowadays, the quality of spot welds is
commonly characterised by the application of random chisel tests,
which are time consuming, expensive and destructive. Recently a
non-destructive testing method by means of active thermography
was proposed that relies on the fact that the mechanical connection
formed by the spot weld also serves as a thermal bridge between
the two steel sheets joined in the welding process. It is shown in this
paper that this thermal bridge can be thermographically characterised
by extracting a measure for the spot weld diameter and hence the
quality of the spot weld. The determination of the absolute value
of the diameter hereby relies on a calibration of the testing system,
which is performed by means of X-ray computed tomography in this
study. The experiments were carried out using different experimental
approaches, namely transmission as well as reflection geometry
wSetup in reflectionith laser illumination. A comprehensive evaluation
of samples produced using different welding currents, hence different
quality, was carried out in order to validate the thermographic results.