Infrared thermography for defect detection on aluminium-CFRP hybrid 3D structure

Advanced materials are widely used in several industries. They play an important role especially in the aeronautic sector where weight reduction is required in order to reduce fuel consumption. Composite materials have a high strength to weight ratio and are applied in airplane construction. In order to ensure the safety of these components during their life cycle, non-destructive testing methods are required. In this work, infrared thermography is used to inspect an aluminium-CFRP hybrid 3D structure. A dual-band infrared camera is used to capture images in two different spectral ranges. Two image-processing techniques are then applied in order to enhance the images: principal component thermography and partial least squares thermography. Finally, a signal-to-noise ratio analysis is performed to assess the quality of the images and detected defects. Results showed that PCT has a slight advantage over PLST in our experiments.