An objective comparison of pulsed, lock-in, and frequency modulated thermal wave imaging

Abstract

An objective comparison of three different thermal non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques - pulsed thermography (PT), lock-in (LI) thermography, and frequency modulated thermal wave imaging (FMTWI), has been carried out on a CFRP sample. The matched energy comparison shows that on the basis of computed SNR, the shallow defects are better detected by PT, while deeper defects are detected equally by all techniques. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.