Efficient selection of independent components for inspection of mild steel sample using infrared thermography

Abstract

Non-destructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) plays a vital role in industrial quality control and structural health monitoring. Among various NDT&E approaches, infrared thermography plays a crucial role due to its merits such as fast, remote, safe, and easy to implement in testing and evaluation of various materials. This Letter presents the statistical post-processing approach for pulse compression favourable frequency modulated thermal wave imaging for inspection of mild steel samples having flat bottom hole defects. Furthermore, a detailed analysis has been carried out using independent component analysis and provides insight for choosing the number of independent components and number of eigenvalues to be retained in the whitening procedure.