8.3 Thermografische Verfahren
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Using an infrared camera for radiometric imaging allows the contactless temperature measurement of multiple surface pixels simultaneously. From the measured surface data, a sub-surface structure, embedded inside a sample or tissue, can be reconstructed and imaged when heated by an excitation light pulse. The main drawback in radiometric imaging is the degradation of the spatial resolution with increasing depth, which results in blurred images for deeper lying structures. We circumvent this degradation with blind structured illumination, combined with a non-linear joint sparsity reconstruction algorithm. The ground-breaking concept of super-resolution can be transferred from optics to thermographic imaging.
Photothermal radiometry with an infrared camera allows the contactless temperature measurement of multiple surface pixels simultaneously. A short light pulse heats the sample. The heat propagates through the sample by diffusion and the corresponding temperature evolution is measured at the sample’s surface by an infrared camera. The main drawback in radiometric imaging is the loss of the spatial resolution with increasing depth due to heat diffusion, which results in blurred images for deeper lying structures. We circumvent this information loss due to the diffusion process by using blind structured illumination, combined with a non-linear joint sparsity reconstruction algorithm. The structured illumination is realized by parallel laser lines from a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) array controlled by a random binary pattern generator. By using 150 different patterns of structured illumination and our iterative joint sparsity algorithm, it was possible to resolve 1 mm thick lines at a distance down to 0.5 mm, which results in a resolution enhancement of approximately a factor of four compared to the resolution of 5.9 mm for homogenous illuminated thermographic reconstruction.
BAM ensures and represents high standards for safety in technology and chemistry. Additive manufacturing (AM) changes the requirements for conventional non-destructive testing (NDT) as new processes of defect creation occur. Especially in safety critical areas, such as aerospace and automotive, new manufacturing processes and materials always require reliability tests and new standards which is a big challenge for NDT.
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.
Optical lock-in thermography is a completely contactless and very sensitive NDT technique. As an optical source of energy, incandescent lamps are most commonly used because they are relatively inexpensive and offer high irradiances at the test specimen. However, they are strongly restricted by their low modulation bandwidth with a maximum modulation frequency of only about 1 Hz. The use of high-power kilowattclass laser sources, e.g. diode laser arrays, pushes this constraint beyond 100 Hz. This allows for the exploration of the near-surface region of metals and layer systems with better and more accurate penetration depth and depth resolution. Moreover, these lasers are virtually free of any additional thermal radiation that could interfere with the “true” thermal response emitted from the heated sample. In turn, they can be easily used in a one-sided test configuration. We present current activities with kilowatt-class highpower laser sources for advanced lock-in thermography and focus on the application of laser arrays that offer a very high irradiation strength over a large sample area beyond the mentioned advantages.
The separation of two closely spaced defects in fields of Thermographic NDE is very challenging. The diffusive nature of thermal waves leads to a fundamental limitation in spatial resolution. Therefore, super resolution image reconstruction can be used. A new concerted ansatz based on spatially structured heating and joint sparsity of the signal ensemble allows for an improved reconstruction of closely spaced defects. This new technique has been studied using a 1D laser array with randomly chosen illumination pattern.
This paper presents the results after applying super resolution algorithms, such as the iterative joint sparsity (IJOSP) algorithm, to our processed measurement data. Different data processing techniques before applying the IJOSP algorithm as well as the influence of regularization parameters in the data processing techniques are discussed. Moreover, the degradation of super resolution reconstruction goodness by the choice of experimental parameters such as laser line width or number of measurements is shown.
The application of the super resolution results in a spatial resolution enhancement of approximately a factor of four which leads to a better separation of two closely spaced defects.
More than 80 representatives of SMEs, industrial companies and research institutes met on September 12 at the workshop "Challenges in Additive Manufacturing: Innovative Materials and Quality Control" at BAM in Adlershof to discuss the latest developments in materials and quality control in additive manufacturing.
In special lectures, researchers, users and equipment manufacturers reported on the latest and future developments in additive manufacturing. Furthermore, funding opportunities for projects between SMEs and research institutions on a national and European level were presented.
Lock-in- and flash thermography are standard methods in active thermography. They are widely used in industrial inspection tasks e.g. for the detection of delaminations, cracks or pores. The requirements for the light sources of these two methods are substantially different. While lock-in thermography requires sources that can be easily and above all fast modulated, the use of flash thermography requires sources that release a very high optical energy in the very short time.
By introducing high-power vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) arrays to the field of thermography a source is now available that covers these two areas. VCSEL arrays combine the fast temporal behavior of a diode laser with the high optical irradiance and the wide illumination range of flash lamps or LEDs and can thus potentially replace all conventional light sources of thermography.
However, the main advantage of this laser technology lies in the independent control of individual array areas. It is therefore possible to heat not only in terms of time, but also in terms of space. This new degree of freedom allows the development of new NDT methods. We demonstrate this approach using a test problem that can only be solved to a limited extent in active thermography, namely the detection of very thin, hidden defects in metallic materials that are aligned vertically to the surface. For this purpose, we generate destructively interfering thermal wave fields, which make it possible to detect defects within the range of the thermal wave field high sensitivity. This is done without pre-treatment of the surface and without using a reference area to depths beyond the usual thermographic rule of thumb.
Among the photothermal methods, full-field thermal imaging is used to characterize materials, to determine thicknesses of layers, or to find inhomogeneities such as voids or cracks. The use of classical light sources such as flash lamps (impulse heating) or halogen lamps (modulated heating) led to a variety of nondestructive testing methods, in particular, lock-in and flash-thermography. In vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), laser light is emitted perpendicularly to the surface with a symmetrical beam profile. Due to the vertical structure, they can be arranged in large arrays of many thousands of individual lasers, which allows power scaling into the kilowatt range. Recently, a high-power yet very compact version of such a VCSEL-array became available that offers both the fast timing behavior of a laser as well as the large illumination area of a lamp. Moreover, it allows a spatial and temporal control of the heating because individual parts of the array can be controlled arbitrarily in frequency, amplitude, and phase. In conjunction with a fast infrared camera, such structured heating opens up a field of novel thermal imaging and testing methods. As a first demonstration of this approach, we chose a testing problem very challenging to conventional thermal infrared testing: The detection of very thin subsurface defects perpendicularly oriented to the surface of metallic samples. First, we generate destructively interfering thermal wave fields, which are then affected by the presence of defects within their reach. It turned out that this technique allows highly sensitive detection of subsurface defects down to depths in excess of the usual thermographic rule of thumb, with no need for a reference or surface preparation.