2011 Third International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation

Modified Infrared Images Contrast for Pulsed Thermography

Ma Shuohan, Ma Qishuang
BeiHang University, Beijing, 100191, China mashuohan@163.com

AbstractInfrared Thermography is an emerging technology for nondestructive testing. However, it is subject to blurring and degradation of the acquired signal, as the diffusive nature in the process. This make difficulties for qualitative and quantitative analysis, especially when deeper defects located within the substrate, as well as high thermal conductivity materials are inspected. In this article, we present the method of thermogram processing to eliminate the effect caused by inhomogeneous heating and surface emissivity variations. The method based on differential thermal contrast, recurring to thermographic signal reconstruction technique, the whole temperature evolution can be fitted instead of a few of frames, subsequently, time-derivatives processing is implemented for characteristic time definition, which play an important role in the modified thermal constrast method. The result is a noisereduced image where the subsurface defects are highlighted. In this way, quantitative parameters, e.g. the area and the depth of the subsurface defects can be extracted easily with precision. In conclusion, experiments with three types of materials validate the theoretical prediction. Keywords-Thermography;Thermogram processing technique; Thermal Contrast Method; Nondestructive Testing;

information of the specimen, which is the limitation and drawback of these thermal contrast methods. Some attempts have been proposed for avoiding this necessity of sound area knowledge. The Differentiated Absolute Contrast (DAC) method is one of the simplest methods[6], This method however, necessity of human choice in order to obtain a satisfactory results and clear contrast images. In this article, we propose a modified thermal contrast method, baesd on DAC to overcome the drawbacks of artificial selection. Three types of materials are investigated in the experiment. II. TRANSIENT PLUSED THERMOGRAPHY

I.

INTRODUCTION

Infrared thermography is a nondestructive testing technique where the inspected material is heated by an external stimulation and the resulting thermal transient at the surface is surveyed by an infrared camera[1,2]. There are two types about infrared thermography: (a) passive, namely the features of sample are naturally at a higher (or lower) temperature than the background; (b) active, which requires an external source to produce a thermal contrast between the region of interest and the background. In general, different techniques can be used for the stimulation sources, pulsed, modulated and step heating. However, there are two types in which an active thermography can be performed, reflection mode (i.e. excitation and data acquisition are carried out on the same side.) and transmission mode (viz. the specimen is stimulated from one side whilst data is recorded on the opposite side.) Usually in aerospace, there is no direct access to both sides of the parts, so the former is often used[3]. Among established thermogram processing techniques, thermal contrast is convenient in order to enhance subsurface defect visibility, and even for obtaining some quantitative analysis regarding the depth, size of the defects and thermal properties[3,4]. Various thermal contrast definition exist e.g. absolute contrast, normalized contrast and standard contrast are typical methods in thermography, but all of them need to know a sound area in advance[5]. That implys a priori
978-0-7695-4296-6/11 $26.00 2011 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICMTMA.2011.443 632

In active thermography, commonly referred to as Pulsed Thermography(PT) as showed in Fig.1, the front surface of a specimen is heated with the flashlamps while an IR camera measures temperature changes in the surface. Heat from the surface diffuses into the sample and is obstructed by the presence of a subsurface defect[7], consequently causes a transient nonuniformity in the infrared radiation from the surface, where will temporarily appear hotter than intact areas. PT has become the preferred implementation for many NDT applications in the aerospace industry, as it offers significantly better repeatability and sensitivity. Fig. 2 shows the result of a primary PT test with a Boeing 767 component.

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of thermal measurement system

III.

MEASUREMENT SETUP AND SAMPLES STUDIED

The thermography experiment system used in the study is analogous to the configuration illustrated in Fig.1. The IR camera is a 240320 FPA with 0.1C temperature resolution and 60Hz frame rates operating in the 3-5 micrometer wavelength band. Two common flash lamps powered by a 3k-Joule power supply with pulse duration of approximately 10 ms.

Figure 2. PT images of a part from aircraft, rear-face (top) and frontface (middle). The light zones in the down picture (0.3s after the flash) denote corrosions on the back, which are invisible to the naked eye

where, =k/( .C) is thermal diffusivity, e = k C is called thermal effusivity, Q is the injected energy at the surface, the temperature change T(t)si at the surface (x=0) of the specimen under the semi-infinite model is: Q (6) Tsi (0, t ) = e t A typical temperature decay on the surface after pulse heating is shown in Fig. 4(a). Temperature of the sound area Tsoa has a lower magnitude than temperature of the surface above the defect Tdef for each moment of time t. The thermal contrast could be expressed in form of subtraction values of thermal response above defective area Tdef and sound area Tsoa : C= Tdef - Tsoa = T(t)def - T(t)soa (7)

Figure 3. Schematic diagram of sample with machined holes

We designed three 6mm thick samples (Fig.3), they are the same characteristic shape, but different materials, which are made in steel, aluminum and plastic respectively. These specimens will allow for the method study to be performed over different material properties and thermal characteristic times. During the testing process, the front face of the specimen was painted with black water-solubility paint to increase the surface emissivity. IV. STRATEGY

Figure 4. (a) temperature decay and contrast; (b) raw temperature image for the best visibility; (c) the temperature change image; (d) Thermal contrast image (the defective point is indicated in red, sound point in green)

The theoretical analysis of the transient heat flow in a bulk follows the three-dimensional differential equation. This equation is a general expression of the conservation of energy for a medium in which heat is generated and propagated and can be expressed as[8]: T (r , t ) (1) [ k T (r, t )] + G(r , t ) = C t where k is the thermal conductivity in W/(m.K), T(r,t) is the temperature distribution as a function of position and time, G(r,t) is the rate of energy generation per unit volume in the medium (W.m3) and C, the specific heat (J.kg-1.K-1) and the density (kg.m-3) of the material. Assuming that the samples under test are homogeneous, in a defect free sample, lateral heat components cancel and the eq. (1) can be simplified to one-dimensional equation, the simplest model used to solve with a Dirac thermal pulse is been applied to the sample, can be expressed by:
T ( x, t ) 2T ( x, t ) = t x 2

Comparing the above figures, we can see the thermal contrast have improved the visibility in regard to the raw thermogram, but the reference point of sound area has to be selected humanly in advance. Problem of reference location was lately solved with the differential absolute contrast (DAC)[9], which is based on eq. (7), moreover instead of selectting a defect free area somewhere in the thermogram, the intact area temperature at time t is computed locally at a any choosed point [i,j] (here [i,j] represents the location) assuming that on the first few images, the local point behaves as a sound of area. The mathematical development is as follows. Let assume t is a time between th(the thermal pulse last up to th) and the time at which the first hot spot related to subsurface defects appears. In this case, at time t, the temperature of the sound area Tsoa[i,j](t) is given by: Q [i , j ] (8) T [i , j ](t ') = T [i , j ](t ') =
soa

e[i , j ] t '

Assuming injected energy over the specimen is changing smoothly, eq. (8) stands and allows to extract Q/e locally: Q[i, j ] (9) = t ' T [i, j ](t ')
e[i, j ]

(2) (3) (4)

From eq. (9), the temperature of the intact area can be defined locally as a function of time t: Q[i , j ] t ' t' (10) T [i , j ](t ) = = T [i , j ](t ') = T [i, j ](t ')
soa

e[i , j ] t

and the initial and boundary condition are as follows: T ( x,0) = 0 T (0, t ) =0 x The solution of eq.(2) is: x2 Q e 4 t T ( x, t) = C t

Finally, performing eq. (10) compute over all the surface (all locations [i,j] in the image) and for the entire temporal sequence, reconstructs the sound area thermogram sequence. Combining eqs. (7) and (8) yields to the DAC formulation:
CDAC (t ) = T [i, j ](t ) t' T [i, j ](t ') t

(11)

(5)

Apparently, the DAC overcomes the disadvantage such as the need to make assumptions on the sound areas
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localization and provides advantage of the possibility of computing a local Tsoa[i,j](t) even in non-uniformity heated surfaces. Nevertheless, some further improvements maybe provided to the DAC method, the determining of the initial time t has been left to the user. This issue always gives some uncertain results. On the other hand, in eq. (11) time t and t are referenced to th. Any error on th will affect NAC computations. The algorithm proposed below, will figure out this issue enhancing the results found by the DAC method at the same time. As stated before, uses the 1-D approximation on the assumption that insulated semi-infinite bulk. Therefore the DAC accuracy decreases for long times after heating when the heat front reaches the sample face opposite to irradiation. So, such procedure should deal with dates at the earlier times. It is noted that the observed maximum (peak) temperature contrast time tm is affected by the 3D heat conduction effect. But the time of maximal slope or first derivative of the temperature contrast ts is less sensitive to the diffusive effect. From eq.(2) to eq.(5), the thermal contrast can be expressed as: n L 2 Q (12) t C (t) = R n e
2 2

Fig.5 describes the relationship of first and second derivatives temperature decay curve to contrast curve.

Figure 5. (a) contrast curve; (b) 1st and (c) 2nd derivative curve

n =1

Here, L is defect depth, R is reflection coefficient, and R=(e1-e2)/(e1+e2), the effusivities e1 and e2 depend upon the material constants for the solid and defect, respectively. For vacuum e2=0 and e1=1, R=1.Because the right term is decaying exponential, we have n=1 reasonably. Then we can get the following correlation(13), it is obvious ts is much earlier than tm, less affected by diffusive effect.
tm = ts = 2 2 L2

As shown in Fig.5, the second derivative peak time td is always shown first and followed by first derivative peak time( i.e. ts) and lastly the maximum contrast peak( i.e. tm). It means that second derivative peak time gives the earliest indications of the eventual flaws compared with the other characteristic times, therefore, blurring effect can be reduced greatly. The peak second-derivative time td is determined as eq.(17) [12]. All the different characteristic times are listed in Table 1. In this work, td is used to substitute t in eq.(11) for thermal contrast computation. L2 (17) td = 2 Now, we have to resolve the subsequent problem, after all, the parameter L (i.e. defect depth) is unknowable in advance. Thereupon, via eq.(15), we can reconstruct the original data in the form of eq.(18). That means, the temperature at any instant in the temperature evolution can be evaluated by this expression, just like extrapolating the whole temperature evolution instead of several frames, thus form eq.(15) to eq.(18), we obtain the td easily by timederivative computation to find the extremum in the curve.

2
3.64 L
2

(13)

Another promising method for thermogram processing is thermographic signal reconstruction (TSR) [10,11] which is developed by Shepard's group in 2001 ( (Shepard, Ahmed, et al. 2001). From eq.(6), Time evolution of the surface temperature in the logarithmic domain after responded to pulse heating is as follows: Q 1 (14) ln(T ) = ln( ) ln( t ) e 2 In practice, the ideal linear rule of logarithmic data may be affected by many uncertain interferer. Normally, an experimental data is excellently fit into a polynomial equation as shown by eq.(15), wher N is the order. This expansion has an additional advantage as low pass filter whilst preserves the essential thermal response.
ln[T (t )] = an [ln(t )]n
n=0 N

T (t ) = e

a n ln ( t ) n

n=0

(18)

Table 1. The different characteristic time at the earlier times first derivative maximum peak secondof the Term temperature derivative time td temperature contrast time tm contrast ts Value

td =

L2 2
V.

ts =

3.64 L2

tm =

2 2 L2

RESULTS

(15)

Besides, time-derivatives processing which enhance the detectability of the defect by increasing the signal to background contrast. In time-derivative analysis, each pixel time history is differentiated using the following expression: N d ln( T ) (16) = n a ln( t ) n 1
d ln ( t )

A. The Aluminum specimen The first sample is an aluminum alloy plate, the layout is shown in Fig.3. The front side of the specimen was painted with black paint to increase the emissivity. The acquired data sets are composed of 110 frames, with image captured at 1/60 second intervals.

n=0

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Fig.8 shows the images for the same three moments as mentioned before. All defects are clearly seen, but the blurring effect arises from the low sampling frequency mainly. However, in this case, the Modified method provides better results.
Figure 6. Aluminum specimen. (a) Temperature contrast image; (b) modified contrast omage at tm (c) modified contrast image at ts, and (d) at td

VI.

CONCLUSIONS

The Fig.6 shows the thermal contrast at different characteristic times respectively for the three cases. For reference, the temperature contrast image using a reference point, selectted as Fig.4, is provided in Fig.6(a) as well. As it is seen both top two images are similar with defects showing over a relatively flat background but not as clearer as the other images using the earlier times. B. The Steel specimen The second specimen is a steel plate of the same configuration as the first one. The acquired data sets are composed of 110 frames, with image captured at 1/60 second intervals. In this case, the images (Fig.7) dont show the expectant result in all the moments of characteristic times. From these charts we can see the surface status have an evident influence over the inspection conclusion, which should be paid more attention to in testing process. At the same time, the material thermophysical parameters play an important role in the result, we know, the thermal conductivity of steel is three times smaller than aluminum, thus the thermal impedance of steel specimen is bigger, so the thermal attenuation is greater in steel under the same injected energy, namely shallower detect depth in steel sample.

This paper studys the modified thermal contrast, based on the Differentiated Absolute Contrast method, recurring to TSR technique, avoids the human intervention during the process. Comparison with the modified thermal contrast method and conventional results also suggests improvement in signal-to-background performance and reduction of blurring in the results essentially, enhance the precision in the future analysis. Further more, the sampling frequency, surface status and materials thermophysical parameters will have an evident impact on the result that need further research. Lastly, experimental works using different materials were realized. The excellent results of the correlation with previous methods validate the proposed algorithm. VII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under project number 60879014. REFERENCES
[1] Avdelidis, N.P., and Almond, D.P. Transient thermography as a through skin imaging technique for aircraft assembly: modelling and experimental results, Infrared Phys Techn, 2004, 45, (2), pp. 103-114 [2] Hung, M.Y.Y., Chen, Y.S. etc. Review and comparison of shearography and pulsed thermography for adhesive bond evaluation, Opt Eng, 2007, 46, (5), pp. 51007-51016 [3] X. Maldague, THEORY AND PRACTICE OF INFRARED TECHNOLOGY FOR NONDESTRUCTIVE TESTING. USA, Wiley Interscience, 2001. [4] Omar, M.A., and Zhou, Y. A quantitative review of three flash thermography processing routines, Infrared Phys Techn, 2008, 51, (4), pp. 300-306 [5] C. Ibarra-Castanedo, D.G. Infrared image processing and data analysis, Infrared Phys Techn, 2004, 46, (1-2), pp. 75-83 [6] M. Pilla, M. Klein, X. Maldague , A. Salerno. New absolute contrast for pulsed thermography. In D. Balageas G. Busse, C. Carlomagno, Proc. QIRT, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2002 [7] Vavilov V.P. Thermal (infrared) tomography: terminology, basic procedures and applications to nondestructive testing of composite materials, Defectoscopiya (Rus. J. NDT), No.3, p. 3-15, 2010 [8] CARLSLAW H.S., Jaeger J.C., Conduction of Heat in Solids, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1959 [9] Hernan Dario Benitez, Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo, etc. Modified Differential Absolute Contrast Using Thermal Quadrupoles for the Nondestructive Testing of Finite Thickness Specimens by Infrared Thermography, in CCECE 2006 (Ottawa, Canada), May 2006 [10] Shepard, S.M., Hou, J. etc. Automated processing of thermographic derivatives for quality assurance, Opt Eng, 2007, 46, (5), pp. 5100651008 [11] Shepard, S.M., Lhota, J.R. etc. Reconstruction and enhancement of active thermographic image sequences, Opt Eng, 2003, 42, (5), pp. 1337-1342 [12] Sun, J.G. Analysis of Pulsed Thermography Methods for Defect Depth Prediction, Journal of Heat Transfer, 2006, 128, (4), pp. 329338

Figure 7. Steel specimen. (a) Temperature contrast image; (b) modified contrast omage at tm (c) modified contrast image at ts, and (d) at td

C. The Plastic specimen The third sample is a plastic plate of the same configuration made out of nylon. The acquired data sets are composed of 140 frames, with image captured at 1 second intervals.

Figure 8. Plastic Specimen.(a) Temperature contrast image; (b) modified contrast omage at tm (c) modified contrast image at ts, and (d) at td

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