Orlando FL, USA — A paper at the 30th ThermoSense Conference (ThermoSense XXX) entitled “Thermographic nondestructive testing using inductive thermal excitation” by Morteza Safai of the Boeing Company. It was presented on March 20th described an innovative method for locating unbonded metallic fiber defects embedded several millimeters deep in a non-conductive plastic matrix.

The technique utilizes a transient heating source consists of a low power, portable “wand” to induce a localized small temperature rise of only a few degrees within the metallic structure. A relatively low cost infrared Thermal Imager is used as a monitor to show the resultant thermal transients. Unconnected metal fibers show up as brilliant, short time duration hot spots.

The inspector can then zoom in and precisely localize the defect location quickly and easily.

Developed as a means to locate and possibly quantify incomplete repairs in composite aircraft skins, this technique may have uses in several other applications, including those with partially conductive plastic materials and possibly even a means to locate defects and thin spots in thin films of conductive materials.

Congratulations to Morteza Safai for a smart and significant contribution to non-contact NDT!

ThermoSense is the annual infrared applications conference held as part of the SPIE’s Defense and Security Symposia.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 9:08 am and is filed under Infrared Thermography, R&D. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.