Characterisation of artificial defects in CFRP and GFRP sheets designed for energy applications using active thermography

The increased use of fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) composites for improved efficiency and reliability in energy related applications e.g. wind and marine turbine blades, nacelles, oil and gas flexible risers, also increases the demand for innovative non-destructive testing technologies. Thus, in order to achieve increased acceptance of suited and optimized non-destructive testing (NDT) methods in industry, the European Metrology Research Programme (EMRP) project ENG57 Validated Inspection Techniques for Composites in Energy Applications (VITCEA) deals with the development and validation of innovative NDT technologies. In this contribution, results concerning thermographic investigations at test specimens during tensile loading and active thermography testing after tensile loading are presented. Additionally, the determination of the optical properties (relative transmittance and directional spectral emissivity) of CFRP and GFRP test specimens is described.