Probability of defect detection in pulse compression favourable frequency modulated thermal wave imaging

Abstract

Infrared thermography plays a vital role in the thermal non-destructive testing and evaluation (TNDT) due to its merits such as whole-field, remote and quantitative defect detection capabilities. Among the various TNDT methods, recently proposed, pulse compression favourable thermal wave imaging gained its importance due to its merits in terms of defect detection sensitivity and resolution. This Letter attempts to compare different post-processing schemes to compare their sub-surface defect detection capabilities for a glass fibre reinforced polymer test sample. Results obtained clearly show defect detection probability of the matched filter-based post-processing approaches are far superior to that of the conventional frequency domain phase approach.