Quantitative evaluation of optical lock-in and pulsed thermography for aluminum foam material

In this article, quantitative evaluation of optical thermographic techniques relative to the non-destructive inspection of aluminum foam material is studied. For this purpose, a set of aluminum foam specimens with flat-bottom holes (FBH) was inspected by both optical lock-in thermography (LT) and pulsed thermography (PT). Probability of detection (PoD) analysis, as a quantitative method to estimate the capability and reliability of a particular inspection technique, was studied and compared for both optical LT and PT inspection results.