Numerical Analysis of the Heat Sink Effect in the Infrared Inspection of Composites

The studies on composite materials, due to their growing popularity in the industrial applications, are one of the most important branch of the non-destructive testing. The different kind of composites (ie. glass-fiber, carbon, with honeycomb or sandwich structures) are used in many industrial applications. The glass-fiber reinforced composites are widely used in the wind turbine blades and are exposed to various kinds of damages. The equipment reliability requirements force the development of accurate methods of their health monitoring. In this paper we present the numerical study of composite samples with artificial damages, using the active thermography with halogen lamp heating, connected with the fan cooling to obtain the heat sink effect.