Krishnendu Chatterjee

Image Enhancement in Transient Lock-In Thermography Through Time Series Reconstruction and Spatial Slope Correction

Lock-in (LI) thermography is a popular thermal-nondestructive-testing technique which, like other active thermographic techniques, requires an external heating stimulus, preferably on a blackened surface. It is not, however, immune to nonideal situations like nonuniform heating and surface emissivity variation. The phase image, to some extent, helps to reduce the effect of these artifacts but is inadequate if the variations are large. For example, a poorly blackened metallic sample with reflecting patches on its surface is very difficult to actively thermograph because of direct reflection from the surface. This paper proposes an image reconstruction algorithm for offline removal of such artifacts. In addition, the proposed algorithm enables LI thermography tests in the transient regime and removes temperature gradients due to nonuniform heating. The algorithm was tested with a mild-steel sample having 20-mm-diameter back-drilled holes at various depths ranging from 0.2 to 7.7 mm, stimulated at 20-, 40-, 50-, 60-, and 80-mHz excitation frequencies. The effect of the total number of heating cycles is also presented.

Prediction of blind frequency in lock-in thermography using electro-thermal model based numerical simulation

Lock-in thermography is increasingly becoming popular as a non-destructive testing technique for defect detection in composite materials for its low heating excitation. The experimental data is processed with Fourier transformation to produce phase and amplitude images. Phase images, though immune to surface emissivity variation, suffer from blind frequency effect, where a defect becomes invisible at a certain excitation frequency. There exists no analytical model to predict this 3-dimensional heat flow phenomenon. This paper presents a study of blind frequency using electro-thermal model based numerical simulation on a piece of thermally anisotropic carbon fibre composite. The performance of the simulator is optimized for spatial mesh size. Further the effect of paint layer, which is often applied to the sample surface for better thermal imaging, has been incorporated in the simulation. Finally, both experimental and simulation results are presented side-by-side for easy comparison.

Characterization and Energy Absorption Efficiency Determination of LED as an Effective Photothermal Excitation Source in Lock-In Thermography

This paper studies the use of light-emitting diode (LED) as an excitation source for photothermal lock-in experiments, and investigates the energy absorption efficiency and signal-to-noise ratio of the established setup. Existing lock-in excitation sources usually use high power (in the range of kilowatt) halogen lamps. The present LED excitation source has an advantage of low power consumption making the setup much more energy efficient. Another advantage of LED in this paper is their low infrared (IR) content, in contrast to halogen lamps, the IR content gets reflected into the IR camera, and leads to an unpredicted change in phase image in lock-in thermography.

Structural noise reduction in frequency modulated thermal wave imaging of carbon fibre composite materials

Frequency modulated thermography is becoming a popular thermal non-destructive testing (TNDT) technique which like other active thermographic techniques, requires an external heating stimulus, preferably on a blackened surface. It is however, not immune to non-ideal situation like non-uniform heating and surface emissivity variation. The phase image helps to reduce the effect of surface emissivity variation to some extent, but is inadequate in case of large variations. Further, structural noise can significantly interfere with the process of defect detection, as in the case of carbon fibre composite materials. This paper proposes two image reconstruction algorithms for off-line reduction of structural noise. The first utilizes the periodic nature of structural noise if present, and removes it using 2-dimensional Fourier transformation and a spatial band-stop filter. The other uses time serial reconstruction algorithm to remove such noise. The latter was originally proposed by the authors to remove artifacts from surface emissivity variation on metallic samples. The performances of both algorithms are successfully demonstrated on a carbon fibre test piece, having 2mm, 4mm, and 6mm diameter back drilled holes at various depths ranging from 0.25mm to 2mm in steps of 0.25mm.

Frequency modulated thermal wave imaging

Pulsed thermography (PT), being simple and fast, remains one of the most popular thermographic NDE techniques, though it has intrinsic limitations. An alternative method is suggested and named frequency modulated thermal wave imaging (FMTWI), where the heating waveform phase relations are adjusted over a bandwidth (B) in such a way, that a chirp (frequency modulated) signal of duration T, with much reduced peak power is produced. FMTWI, while retaining all characteristics of lock-in thermography, has the added advantage of overcoming the blind frequency problem. It can be processed by matched filtering (pulse compression) to improve sensitivity.