Evaluating Thermal Properties of Sugarcane Bagasse-Based Composites by Using Active Infrared Thermography and Terahertz Imaging

This study is devoted to the analysis of impact damage in composite samples by applying techniques of IR and Terahertz imaging. The samples made of high-density homogeneous particleboards of sugarcane bagasse and castor oil polyurethane resin were subjected to impacts with the energy from 5 to 30 J. The impact damage defects were evaluated by applying one- and two-sided thermal non-destructive testing. Both the apparent thermal effusivity and diffusivity were determined to analyse their relationship to impact energy. In the above mentioned range of impact energies, the thermal effusivity varied from 5 to 18%, while the variations in thermal diffusivity were from 4 to 24%. The algorithm of dynamic thermal tomography was used to demonstrate that predominant subsurface cracking occurred at depths up to 1 mm. In addition, the defect areas were tested by applying the Terahertz technique, whose results qualitatively matched the IR thermographic ones to show that the damaged areas were larger than they appeared visually. However, both inspection techniques have revealed no significant dependence of analysed parameters on impact energy. This is believed to prove that non-uniform composite structure is the decisive factor in producing structural defects under impacting.