The concept of laser spot thermography test rig with real-time data processing

Abstract

The paper shows the concept of Laser Spot Thermography test rig with real time data processing. Laser Spot Thermography is a promising method for non-destructive testing applications especially, when fully non-contact procedure is required. Unfortunately, the procedure as of now is hard to apply, due to technical difficulties related with data processing. Laser thermography test procedure involves recording of multiple sequences (even hundreds), which have to be processed and evaluated as a whole. The industry requires quick and precise results, which is hard to achieve with the amount of output data from the currently known test procedure. The paper gives a proposal for improving the laser thermography test procedure through data parameterization (curve fitting) for infrared sequences. The data parameterization allows for reduction of output data size, in particular temporary data storage in RAM. The reduction of data size leads to faster real time processing.