8.3 Thermografische Verfahren
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Since laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M) is prone to the formation of defects during the building process, a fundamental requirement for widespread application is to find ways to assure safety and reliability of the additively manufactured parts. A possible solution for this problem lies in the usage of in-situ thermographic monitoring for defect detection. In this contribution we investigate possibilities and limitations of the VIS/NIR wavelength range for defect detection. A VIS/NIR camera can be based on conventional silicon-based sensors which typically have much higher spatial and temporal resolution in the same price range but are more limited in the detectable temperature range than infrared sensors designed for longer wavelengths. To investigate the influence, we compared the thermographic signatures during the creation of artificially provoked defects by local parameter variations in test specimens made of a nickel alloy (UNS N07208) for two different wavelength ranges (~980 nm and ~1600 nm).
Robotic-assisted 3D scanning and laser thermography for crack inspection on complex components
(2024)
The integration of automation and robotics into inspection processes has marked a transformative shift in the evaluation of complex components. This study presents a novel approach employing robotic-assisted laser thermography for the automated identification and in-depth analysis of cracks in these intricate structures. This method not only streamlines the inspection process but also eliminates the need for numerous manual steps and the use of chemicals associated with traditional methods such as dye penetrant testing. With the increasing com-plexity of components, this is an important step, especially with regard to additively manufactured components, in order to be able to guarantee component safety for a long lifecycle.
Passive infrared thermography as an inspection tool for operational wind turbine rotor blades
(2024)
The growing wind energy infrastructure presents a significant challenge in the maintenance and operation of wind turbines (WT) and their intricate components. An important aspect of WT maintenance is the inspection of wind turbine rotor blades (WTB) to ensure the overall health and safety of the turbine. This inspection process involves both visual and mechanical examinations of the blades to identify any indicators of damage or wear that could compromise their performance and, consequently, the structural integrity of the entire WT system. The complexity of WTBs is compounded by their ever-expanding dimensions, exceeding 100 meters in length for 16 MW WT systems, and their multi-material composition. Within this context, passive infrared thermography emerges as a potential alternative to conventional contact- or proximity-based inspection methods. Unlike active thermography, passive thermography uses solar radiation and ambient temperature variation for thermal contrast, eliminating the need for traditional heat lamps, flash, or laser-based techniques.
A novel inspection method has been developed to semi-autonomously assess wind turbine blades (WTBs) while the wind turbine (WT) is operational, from ground level. This approach leverages optimal thermal contrast, which depends on prevailing weather conditions during field measurements, enabling the visualization of both external and internal features of the WTBs through post-processing techniques. In this study, thermal data obtained through passive thermography is compared with contemporaneous visual imagery to definitively classify observed features in thermal images as either surface or sub-surface features. This analysis, coupled with corresponding weather conditions, provides valuable insights into the capabilities and limitations of the inspection technique. Additionally, finite-element-based (FE) thermal simulations of a WTB section are employed to parametrically assess the influence of weather conditions, beyond those observed during field measurements, based on a validated model.
In addition, the thermal images also consist of thermal signatures of leading-edge turbulence due to possible leading-edge erosion in WTBs. These are primarily vortices, and their shape and size depend on the morphology of the damage as well as the rotational speed of the WTBs. The inspections are accompanied by automatic data evaluation of the thermal signatures. To improve the precision of erosion damage identification, a fully convolutional network (FCN) is employed, trained, and tested using over 1000 annotated thermographic blade images. Additionally, the study introduces strategies for grouping smaller damage indications and simplification rules based on realistic thermal imaging resolutions. As leading-edge erosion could potentially lead to annual energy production (AEP) losses, this technique could prove to be a powerful tool in establishing the presence of damage and the resulting AEP loss.
Defects are still common in metal components built with Additive Manufacturing (AM). Process monitoring methods for laser powder bed fusion (PBF-LB/M) are used in industry, but relationships between monitoring data and defect formation are not fully understood yet. Additionally, defects and deformations may develop with a time delay to the laser energy input. Thus, currently, the component quality is only determinable after the finished process.
Here, active laser thermography, a nondestructive testing method, is adapted to PBF-LB/M, using the defocused process laser as heat source. The testing can be performed layer by layer throughout the manufacturing process. We study our proposed testing method along experiments carried out on a custom research PBF-LB/M machine using infrared (IR) cameras.
Our work enables a shift from post-process testing of components towards in-situ testing during the AM process. The actual component quality is evaluated in the process chamber and defects can be detected between layers.
Modern laser systems have proven to be versatile heat sources for active thermographic testing applications. 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 power density and inspected area, the cost of the laser system, etc. Furthermore, when working with spatial modulator systems, the output power could be limited to avoid provoking any damages on such devices. Nevertheless, to guarantee sufficient 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 which the use of coded excitations combined with pulse-compression, and the use of multiple lock-in analysis or of 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, temporal structured excitation schemes with different degrees of complexity are compared on a high power laser system.
In infrared thermography, the interaction of the heat flow with the internal geometry or inhomogeneities in a sample and their effect on the transient temperature distribution is used, e.g., to detect defects non-destructively. An equivalent way of describing this is the propagation of thermal waves inside the sample. Although thermography is suitable for a wide range of inhomogeneities and materials, the fundamental limitation is the diffuse nature of thermal waves and the need to measure their effect radiometrically at the sample surface only. The crucial difference between diffuse thermal waves and propagating waves, as they occur, e.g., in ultrasound, is the rapid degradation of spatial resolution with increasing defect depth. This degradation usually limits the applicability of thermography for finding small defects on and below the surface.
A promising approach to improve the spatial resolution and thus the detection sensitivity and reconstruction quality of the thermographic technique lies in the shaping of these diffuse thermal wave fields using structured laser thermography.
Some examples are:
• Narrow crack-like defects below the surface can be detected with high sensitivity by superimposing several interfering thermal wave fields,
• Defects very close to each other can be separated by multiple measurements with varying heating structures,
• Defects at different depths can be distinguished by an optimized temporal shaping of the thermal excitation function,
• Narrow cracks on the surface can be found by robotic scanning with focused laser spots.
We present the latest results of this technology obtained with high-power laser systems and modern numerical methods.
Thermographic NDT is based on the interaction of thermal waves with inhomogeneities. The propagation of thermal waves from the heat source to the inhomogeneity and to the detection surface according to the thermal diffusion equation leads to the fact that two closely spaced defects can be incorrectly detected as one defect in the measured thermogram. In order to break this spatial resolution limit (super resolution), the combination of spatially structured heating and numerical methods of compressed sensing can be used.
The improvement of the spatial resolution for defect detection then depends in the classical sense directly on the number of measurements. Current practical implementations of this super resolution detection still suffer from long measurement times, since not only the achievable resolution depends on performing multiple measurements, but due to the use of single spot laser sources or laser arrays with low pixel count, also the scanning process itself is quite slow. With the application of most recent high-power digital micromirror device (DMD) based laser projector technology this issue can now be overcome.
Our studies deal with the application of fully 2D-structured DMD-based excitation and subsequent super-resolution-based defect reconstruction. We analyze the influence of different testing parameters, like the number of measurements or the white content of the excitation pattern. Furthermore, we have dealt with the choice of parameters in the reconstruction that have an influence on the underlying minimization problem in terms of compressed sensing. Finally, the results of the super resolution reconstruction are compared with the results based on conventional thermographic testing methods.
The properties of laser radiation result in a wide range of applications, making laser technologies indispensable in areas such as industry, science and medicine. The possible areas of application for thermography in this context are just as diverse. Thermography is used in laser applications when permanent monitoring and control of thermal development is necessary. Among others, this is the case in additive manufacturing, laser-based measuring devices and non-destructive testing. Furthermore, thermography is ideally suited as a testing method when it comes to ensuring the quality of the laser itself. In this talk it is outlined, how lasers can be used as a heat source in active thermographic testing. Furthermore, two special variants (spatial & temporal structured heating) are described, for which lasers are highly suitable.
Laser powder bed fusion of metallic components (PBF-LB/M) is gaining acceptance in industry. However, the high costs and lengthy qualification processes required for printed components create the need for more effective in-situ monitoring and testing methods. This article proposes multispectral Optical Tomography (OT) as a new approach for monitoring the PBF-LB/M process. Compared to other methods, OT is a low-cost process monitoring method that uses long-time exposure imaging to observe the build process. However, it lacks time resolution compared to expensive thermographic sensor systems. Monochromatic OT (1C-OT) is already commercially available and observes the building process layer-wise using a single wavelength window in the NIR range. Multispectral OT (nC-OT) utilizes a similar setup but can measure multiple wavelength ranges per location simultaneously. By comparing the classical 1C-OT and nC-OT approaches, this article examines the advantages of nC-OT (two channel OT and RGB-OT) in reducing the false positive rate for process deviations and approximating maximum temperatures for a better comparison between different build processes and materials. This could ultimately reduce costs and time for part qualification. The main goal of this contribution is to assess the advantages of nC-OT compared to 1C-OT for in-situ process monitoring of PBF-LB/M.
Laser powder bed fusion is one of the most promising additive manufacturing techniques for printing complex-shaped metal components. However, the formation of subsurface porosity poses a significant risk to the service lifetime of the printed parts. In-situ monitoring offers the possibility to detect porosity already during manufacturing. Thereby, process feedback control or a manual process interruption to cut financial losses is enabled.
Short-wave infrared thermography can monitor the thermal history of manufactured parts which is closely connected to the probability of porosity formation. Artificial intelligence methods are increasingly used for porosity prediction from the obtained large amounts of complex monitoring data. In this study, we aim to identify the potential and the challenges of deep-learning-assisted porosity prediction based on thermographic in-situ monitoring.
Therefore, the porosity prediction task is studied in detail using an exemplary dataset from the manufacturing of two Haynes282 cuboid components. Our trained 1D convolutional neural network model shows high performance (R2 score of 0.90) for the prediction of local porosity in discrete sub-volumes with dimensions of (700 x 700 x 40) μm³.
It could be demonstrated that the regressor correctly predicts layer-wise porosity changes but presumably has limited capability to predict differences in local porosity. Furthermore, there is a need to study the significance of the used thermogram feature inputs to streamline the model and to adjust the monitoring hardware. Moreover, we identified multiple sources of data uncertainty resulting from the in-situ monitoring setup, the registration with the ground truth X-ray-computed tomography data and the used pre-processing workflow that might influence the model’s performance detrimentally.